Easy DIY built-in cabinets in the basement

Easy DIY built-in cabinets in the basement

• 4.20.2026

We recently added a wall of built-in cabinets to the basement playroom/TV room... something I was always intimidated by before, but they turned out great and it wasn't that expensive! Sharing the details.

Easy DIY Built-In Cabinets

The basement has come a long way and this playroom/TV room was feeling close to done... but was not cute. The blue walls and trim made it feel like it needed better design than a standard basement bonus room. 

I asked on Instagram and a bunch of you suggested built-ins... my first thought: "that's too much work!" But I did some research on easy ways to do it, like pre-assembled kitchen cabinets (including this helpful blog post)... and decided to go for it.

I chose these cabinets which are great cause they're solid wood, easy to prime and paint any color you want, and of course come pre-assembled. They come in a ton of sizes. We used upper cabinets for this run since I wanted something shallow, not too deep we'd lose toys in the back. 

Back in the day I would have done all this myself and hated life for several weekends, but thankfully this time I was able to hire a local handyman we've used on a couple things and he did most of the work. He had to cut the baseboard down to keep the cabinets level as the floor slopes away from the back wall!

I tried to paint them myself but had some mishaps with the paint, had a minor mental breakdown, and then had the handyman paint them... but then I had to touch them up anyway. 

The hinges took some adjusting once installed and I added these cute wooden knobs I painted to match. Very British-inspired, just like the blue-on-blue paint down here. 

Honestly it looked like this for a while... then I figured out the art, added an ottoman, etc... but at least there's storage room!

This room is finally done... I owe you a big basement update blog post soon!

(That's "pink world" on the right... Lucy's Barbie house village and play area! She loves it)

To the left of the cabinets is our Christmas, etc. storage room (which is still not optimized, oh well) and weights. This has become a great workout space! We can watch YouTube workouts on the TV and just scoot the ottoman over. 

Above the cabinets I hung some memento's that used to be in my parents' basement... my dad's Air Force and Intel recognitions. He died recently and I'm happy to give them a home here.

The cabinets are perfect and we love this space now! Shop these cabinets here!