Planning Our Home Gym

When we moved in every room in the house was painted a neutral off white color except one room. One of the bedrooms in the back of the house was the greenest room we have ever seen. We liked to imagine it was what walking into a Leprechaun’s house might feel like. Three walls were a darker green and there was an accent wall that was a pastel green. It was an interesting design choice.

Anyway, it was a little too bright for us so the first thing we did was paint over it with one of our favorite neutral “greige” colors, Utterly Beige. After that we pretty much ignored this room. On our floor plan page we have generously been calling it our home gym but the truth is the only thing that even remotely resembled anything work out related in that room was a few old Wii-Fit Discs (that were collecting dust) and a jump rope.

But it was inevitable, as we continued to work on other projects throughout the house, our empty back room somehow developed a gravitational pull and collected all the various left over supplies from other projects, tools we had been missing for months and an unusual amount of cardboard. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think its one of Newton’s lost laws that if a space sits empty, junk will move to fill it.

We finally had enough of the current situation and sat down two weeks ago and had our “dream big” talk about what we would like to do with this space to make it have a purpose. We both agreed a home gym would be the best use of the space for us during this time of our life.

But if you have learned anything about Brent and I, we can’t just have a home gym; we have to completely transform the room so it feels like you are transported to another place entirely. If our breakfast nook takes us to a coffee shop, we want our home gym to take us, stay with me here, to an old warehouse. My inspiration is a boxing gym with worn leather equipment set in a warehouse.

Sources: 1 | 2 | 3

I want it to have a vintage and industrial feel but also incorporate a few modern elements. Before we begin sharing our projects for this room, we wanted to give you a look at what we are planning.

Brick Accent Wall | Brick Harboard Wall Panels from Lowe’s (which we will be painting to match the brick pictured above)
The largest project we are planning is to create a worn brick accent wall. This feature will be essential in creating the industrial loft/old warehouse look. We will be purchasing harboard wall panels that look like brick and then painting over them to create a more realistic old brick appearance. We have wanted to do a brick wall somewhere in the house and this room is perfect because it makes the most sense in terms of design.

Gym Flooring | Mats from Lowe’s
We had initially planned to use one type of mat and then changed our minds and decided to instead use these foam mats instead. We like the gray color, how easy they are to assemble, fit together nicely for a clean appearance and would be a snap to pull up in the future if we decide to go with different flooring down the road.

Wall Fan | Faraday 14-in Wall Fan from ATG Stores
How awesome is this wall fan? It fits perfectly with the style we are going for in this room. This room currently doesn’t have a ceiling fan so our first thought was to add one but the ceiling is pretty low and we didn’t want anything to hang down low enough where we could possibly hit it while working out. We will instead go with a unique lighting solution. But a work out room without a fan circulating air seems like a bad idea, so having this large wall fan is the perfect solution.

Lockers | Vintage Locker 3-Door Perforated Cabinet from Restoration Hardware
These lockers from Restoration Hardware have a great vintage vibe. I’ll be honest this is one area we won’t be splurging and will definitely be DIY-ing. We are going to be making our own lockers that fit inside the closet in the room so we can customize them. But these lockers provide great inspiration for the direction we want to go.

Rug | Catalina Area Rug from ATG Stores
The overall color palette of the room will be extremely neutral so we wanted to work in a bit of color in our designated yoga area where we plan to place this rug and have a few colorful yoga mats on a yoga mat holder we will be building. I like this blue color because it is different than what we typically use in our house and the material of the rug gives it a relaxed feel that makes it perfect for a gym.

Clock | Industrial Clock from Restoration Hardware
Another DIY project we have planned is to makeover a modern clock into one that looks like it belonged in a gymnasium in the 1940’s like this one from Restoration Hardware. I love the cage and metal that is on this clock. It screams vintage gym. We are hoping to incorporate these elements into our DIY clock project to give it a similar appearance.

Floor Mirror | Baxton Studio Daffodil Floor Mirror from Wayfair
Most gyms have mirrors hanging on the walls and while it was tempting to create a mirror wall, just kidding, we decided that having a large framed floor mirror leaning against the brick wall would be a stylish way to incorporate a mirror into the room without straying from our design concept.

Treadmill
What’s a gym without a treadmill? This will be the large piece of workout equipment in our gym.

Leather Medicine Ball | from eBay
One aspect of making over this room that I am looking forward to is decorating it with unique vintage pieces. We got this old leather medicine ball off eBay that I am excited about because it really completes my vision for this room. We will also have a few more DIY projects planned such as wall art made from old photographs that I am looking forward to working on to round out the room.

We were so excited to begin this room transformation that we actually started before we had time to post what we were planning on the blog. We are already making great progress on it. If you have been following along with us on Periscope you maybe have already seen a sneak peek or two. If you missed it you can catch it below.

Just a reminder we will be sharing our progress Thursday nights at 8PM CST on Periscope. You can find us @grayhousestudio as we share sneak peaks of the updates we are making to our room to transform it into our home gym. It is great fun to meet all of you and hear what you are up to as well so I hope you can join us!

If you miss any of our scopes, you can watch them on our Periscope playlist on our YouTube channel.

In our next post we will be sharing more about the flooring we chose for the room that will be in our home gym so be sure to come back and check that out!