Man Caves: From Baseballs to Brewskies in Your Basement

When we think of design inspired rooms, we most often think of living rooms and bedrooms with color coordinating throw pillows and eye-pleasing wall art. We don’t usually think about baseball bats on the wall, or used tires doubling as a coffee table. Wrenches certainly never play into a design scheme. But a simple search of man caves on Pinterest can inspire even the most traditional of decorators to use their DIY skills to transform the most unlikely items into a guy getaway.

To help, here are our favorite basement and garage man cave ideas and themes on a budget. These are pulled from Pinterest and pinned to our aptly named “Man Cave” board. We had a lot of fun pinning these creative ideas and we encourage you to check it out!

Sports Man Cave

Do you have a sports fan who also loves to show his American pride? This man cave theme is a Home Run for Him. Paint wooden baseball bats red, white and blue in an American Flag pattern for a unique piece of man cave wall art.

Here’s a few more DIY ideas:

• Throw old, dirty baseballs in an extra-large mason jar to keep the theme going.

• Paint baseball or football stitching on an accent wall and take old sports jerseys and sew them into throw pillows to tie it all together.

• Use two old basketball hoops placed on their sides as the base for a slam dunk man cave coffee table.

• Glue pieces of “turf” to inexpensive ceramic tiles from your preferred home improvement store for a unique set of coasters.

• Need extra man cave seating? This quite possibly is our favorite idea for man cave chairs: Attach a tailgate from an old truck to the wall. When you need seats or a table for game day food, just lower the tail gate. Tailgating from home when you can’t make the game!

Car Themed Man Cave

Is your man a Motor Head? Your inspiration will tach out at 100 mph with these engine revving ideas. Consider starting your man cave renovation with used tires, with or without the rims. Paint and stack two tires on top of each other and place a round piece of glass on top to transform the treaded rubber into a coffee table or end table. Take it a step further and insert a piece of board between the tires for a handy storage space or display case. Or, cut out a cushion and fabric to fit the tire and turn it into a chair. There are so many upcycle ideas for tires out there!

• Find some wrenches and “using super human strength” (that was the instructions via the Pin) bend them halfway for some very utilitarian coat hooks.

• We also saw some suitcases cut in half and transformed into shelving units, but to fit this theme better, why not use old toolboxes!

Man Cave Brewery

Options abound for the beer-themed man cave. Beer bottles transformed into chandeliers and empty aluminum beer bottles as the housing for unique tract lighting - time consuming but wow, what an effect!

• In a smaller space, find a small dresser to use as a TV stand. Remove half of the drawers and support pieces to make room for a mini-fridge.

• For this room, drink coasters can be made using cut-out pieces from a favorite six-pack case.

• This next idea combines the best of both male and female worlds: transform old beer bottles into candles by first cutting the bottles in half, and then use candle votives or, for the true DIYers out there, make your own candles. There’s a great tutorial on our Pinterest board on how to cut beer bottles.​

Music Man Cave

For the male musician in your life, give him a man cave that rocks. Display several guitars on the wall for storage and a focal piece or use a pendant light kit and turn an old drum into a one-of-a-kind lighting fixture. We saw an old drum transformed into a clock and loved that, too!

• Take sheet music and, using some Mod Podge, glue it to tiles to make a set of coasters.

• Records can be displayed as wall art or even transformed into magazine racks.

• Old rock-n-roll band t-shirts can be sewn into throw pillows.

All of these ideas will coordinate into a rockin’ man cave!

Outdoor Hunting Man Cave

Hunting for a perfect design for an outdoorsman? Bring the great outdoors indoors with some of these man cave ideas.

• Antlers can be used in a variety of ways, such as a DIY light fixture of as a door handle, or even as a curtain “tie-back.

• Make a coat rack for this room by attaching used shotgun shells to a board.

• Use a fishing pole as a way to display photos and memorabilia. You can buy these pre-made or you can attach an old pole to the wall and using more fishing line, hang pictures from the pole itself. Now that’s a design catch!

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We’re not able to list all of the manly man cave ideas we found on Pinterest, but trust us when we say that you'll want to check out the pins we’ve added to our Man Cave board for inspiration. Pin your favorites to your own man cave board! If you can’t find what you are looking for there, just do a quick Pinterest search of “man cave” and you will have plenty to choose from! Let us know how your man cave renovation goes!

Happy Pinning!

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