Our process for choosing the right home gym floor mats was a bit of a bumpy road but in the end we found the right fit for our gym floor.
Hey, it’s Brent here today sharing how we chose our home gym floor mats. Have you ever stumbled across the perfect pin? You know the pin that gives you a fantastic idea guaranteeing to take your project to the next level. When the supplies are easy to source and the skills needed aren’t too advanced, Pinterest can inspire you to try something new.
Sure, in the back of our heads we all know “Pinterest Fails” are a real thing but we try and be optimistic and never think it will happen to us. As we began work on our home gym room makeover, we experienced our own “Pinterest Fail”. It wasn’t the messy kind of disaster that leaves you feeling empty on the inside but rather the kind that forces you to decide if you are willing to settle for something almost right or start over.
By now hopefully you have seen the plans for our home gym. This is our first total room makeover and at first it was hard to decide where to start. But after seeing a pin with the perfect solution for a gym floor we were exited to get to work.
How To Install Home Gym Floor Mats
SUPPLIES
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INSTALL GYM FLOOR MATS
1. We woke up early to start tearing up the carpet. After the first rip of the carpet from the nail strips there was no turning back.
First Attempt at Installing Home Gym Floor Mats
Once the carpet was out, we took the advice from what we thought was a reliable source based on a pin on Pinterest and went to purchase our new flooring.
We drove thirty miles to our nearest Tractor Supply store where we purchased brand new black rubber stall mats. Maybe you’re already seeing the red flags, but we thought the idea of stall mats in a home gym was just crazy enough to work.
Plus, it was going to save quite a bit of money.
As we loaded them, a stranger in a cowboy hat asked us what we were doing with 15 stall mats but I’m sure what he actually meant was what is someone driving a Ford Focus doing trying to squeeze 15 large stall mats in the back.
We were excited to inform him of our genius idea. By the expression on his face he was not as convinced as we were.
When we arrived home I started placing the mats on the floor and cutting them to size as Courtney unloaded the mats from the car.
Our main concern was if we would be able to cut the mats but that part turned out to be easy.
After scoring the mat with a straight edge, I simply folded the mat over and continued cutting along the previous mark with my box cutter until I cut all the way through the mat.
The first row went down great but once we started placing the second row we noticed a thickness and size variation from mat to mat.
This size variation resulted in gaps between the mats and ridges where a thicker mat lined up to a thinner mat.
We were really torn on what to do in this scenario. The black mats looked and felt great in the room but the small gaps just made it feel slightly off and not clean or professional.
After sleeping on it, reading the Tractor Supply return policy, and admitting we are in fact not smarter than a fifth grader we returned the uncut mats to the store.
Luckily we had only cut through three.
Second Attempt at Installing Home Gym Floor Mats
We decided to do a little more research and concluded that our original idea of gym foam tiles would look the best, be a breeze to install and actually cost a little less than the black stall mats.
One of the reasons we went with the black mats to begin with is because we thought it would be cheaper but we found we were able to get 10 packs of four of the gray foam mats on Amazon for less than we had spent on the others and these would work really well as our home gym floor mats.
2. We installed the foam squares starting in one corner of the room and worked our way around the room cutting the last piece of each row to size with a straight edge and box cutter.
3. The tiles come in packs of four and we quickly noticed that each pack is a slightly different shade of gray.
Varying colors weren’t as noticeable or as big of a deal as varying thicknesses. We were able to mix the tiles all together to avoid large areas of the same shade of gray to make it look intentional and are happy with the results of our home gym floor mats.
It is exhausting to change gears mid-project and have to start over with a new idea and it may be a blow to your pride to admit defeat but we always try and keep the picture of what we want to the finished room to look like in mind to keep us from settling even when things get hard.
That way when you reach the intended final result, the sense of accomplishment is even more gratifying. It is said that comedy is tragedy plus time and we certainly like to laugh so I guess it is all worth it.
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