When we bought our house in 2018, one of the selling points was that it had room for a home gym. It was a little run down and it needed some work, but it had a wall of mirrors and a lot of potential.
Over the years, I’ve now renovated this room twice. The first time, I was cleaning it up and fixing some old issues. By the end, it was in pretty nice shape, but the foam tiles I used for the floor didn’t hold up for the long term.
So my goal for this summer was to fix up the gym a second time with a better solution on the floors. It’s been on my mind for a while, and I finally ordered everything I needed and put in the work last month. I put a few finishing touches on things this week, and my new home gym is open for business.
Here’s the story, with plenty of pictures, showing where things started and where they ended up.
Moving In: At Least There’s Potential
We bought our house in 2018, and it was a fixer upper. It wasn’t totally run down, but it was definitely the ugly house in a beautiful section of town. It had all of the space we needed, but it was going to need a lot of updating. That first year was a busy – and expensive – year.
The house has a finished basement, and when we first viewed the house we were excited to see that it had a home gym. They had a couple machines in there and some foam tiles. The thing that solidified this room as a gym is that it had floor to ceiling mirrors installed on one side.
Of course, as soon as we moved in, this became our storage area. Until we unpacked, this was the staging area where all of the boxes and other things went. Our cat enjoyed climbing through the mess, but otherwise we couldn’t use the gym.
It wasn’t until after we moved in that we realized that we would have to deal with some water issues. The house is a raised ranch built into a hill, and the front of the house would occasionally have water seep in. There were a mix of causes – poor grading, backed up window wells, and a generally problematic water table.
It all added up to a damp, water damaged gym. After I removed the molding, I saw how much water had gotten under it so I removed a section of drywall. I got rid of the insulation, dried things out, and cleaned them up.
Eventually, we solved the water issue with a multi-pronged approach. We regraded our yard to divert some of the water away from the house. We cleared out the window wells so they didn’t overflow. And we eventually got french drains put inside – one small one in the back room that you can see through the door below and a bigger one in the garage.
As you can see, the cat approved of this work. The gym still wasn’t finished, but it was in a more useable state. I wasn’t big into running at this point (2019), but I got a weight bench so I could work out at home. Most of my cardio came from hiking on the trails near my house.
The First Renovation – Good Enough
It took a while to progress from that original state to a mostly finished gym. But eventually, I got there.
The ceiling tiles were old and stained, so I threw them all out. I would eventually go to Home Depot to get some new tiles, but that was one of the last steps.
I painted over the unfinished concrete floor with some white paint. It helped make things look a little more finished and less grimy, although the floor would eventually get covered anyway. And I painted the drywall and molding.
I still hadn’t replaced the section of drywall that I removed in the beginning. Looking back at the pictures, I don’t remember why that is or how long it remained in this state. But at some point we did install a piece of drywall and paint it. Don’t worry.
Now things are finally starting to look finished. I ordered some foam tiles from Amazon and laid them down to cover up the cement floor.
The tiles came in 2’x2′ interlocking squares. They also had borders you could put on the edge to make things look finished. They were relatively inexpensive, and I was able to quickly lay them out across the floor. The foam was easy to cut along the perimeter to make things fit nicely. I think it cost about $100 to cover the floor in this room.
In the picture above you can see things starting to take shape.
And here’s the more or less finished version of the gym. I found a cheap treadmill on Amazon and a little weight rack for the side of the room. This XTERRA treadmill used to be cheaper – I think I got it for about $300. But it’s perfect for an easy jog in the basement.
I got a lot of use out of the gym in this state. Shortly after I took this picture (early 2020) the world shutdown for COVID. During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time in here when I wasn’t out hiking or starting to run. I never did use the weight bench as much as I hoped, but I definitely got my money’s worth from that treadmill.
Over time, though, the foam tiles did not hold up. Heavy objects (like the weight bench and the treadmill) left semi-permanent indents. We also have pets (two cats and a dog) and if one of them had an accident down in the gym it was hard to clean up. Over the next few years, I ended up throwing out most of the tiles.
Home Gym Renovation: The Long Term Solution
I liked the foam tiles – or some kind of flooring – a lot better than the exposed concrete floor. The problem, though, was that we needed something that was durable and easy to clean.
When we went to visit my Aunt in Minneapolis, she had just renovated an old garage into a dining room. She used horse stall mats as flooring, and the idea seemed perfect. They were heavy duty, and they were made to repeatedly and easily cleaned.
After shopping around at a few different places, I settled on American Floor Mats. They had a few different options, but I ended up getting the pre-cut 6’x4′ rubber mats.
The gym is approximately 13′ by 9′, so six of these mats would be more than enough. They were heavy, and when they got there I was glad I hadn’t gone for the longer custom cut rolls. A 13′ roll of this stuff would have been very heavy. These mats also qualified for the free shipping, so it ended up being a little cheaper to get these.
All in, it cost about $600. It’s a lot pricier than the foam tiles, but I think it’ll be a much better long term solution.
To prep for installation of the mats, I moved as much stuff as I could out of the gym. Some of the larger items – including my Peloton Tread (we upgraded from the old XTERRA), my wife’s Peloton, and some of the weights – got pushed into one corner.
Then I gave the floor a good scrubbing with some Fabuloso before I opened up the first mat. They’re heavy, so they lay flat pretty easily. But it is a good idea to lay them down so that the curled up side faces down.
Here’s the first mat laid down in the corner. I started wearing socks after this, because otherwise my footprints were leaving dust on the black mats. I was able to lay three of these mats down to cover the majority of the floor, and then I had to cut the other mats down to size to fit along the perimeter.
The tiles were pretty easy to cut. I took a scrap of 2×4 from the garage and put that under the place that I wanted to cut. Then I used the L square to line things up and I gently scored a line. Once I’d started the cut, I went back over it two or three times with the utility knife and it cut through.
Here you can see things about halfway done. I was cutting the last few tiles to finish things up.
I also ordered a sealant from the manufacturer to put on top of mats. You can see the two in the back are a little darker and shinier. They have the sealant on them already.
It arrives in a giant container that looks like a gallon of glue. I spread two coats on the mats with an old paint brush. Each coat was dry to the touch after two hours or so, but I let a full day go in between coats.
And here’s the finished product. You can see that we eventually did finish that drywall that had been cut out a few years ago. It took some patience, but I cut the mats to size and they fit perfectly. The whole process took four or five hours, spread across a few days to cut things to size, seal the floor, and move stuff back in.
I also took this opportunity to rearrange the equipment. The Peloton bike is on the left and the Tread is in the back on the right side of the gym. The squat rack is against the back wall and the weights are against the mirror.
This leaves just enough room in the middle for me to roll out a yoga mat for stretching, yoga, or medicine ball work.
The Finishing Touches
This week, I ordered a few last things to put the finishing touches on things. Clearly I was too lazy to wash the mirror before I took this picture, though.
The furnace room through that small door in the back is also where the cat litter is. We are notoriously bad about emptying said litterbox, so I got a small trash can with some liners to put in there. We use crystal litter, which doesn’t smell much and reduces the amount of litter that the cat tracks out of the pan. With the trash can, I can scoop the poop on a daily basis and change the rest of the litter less frequently.
I’ve also got a couple of pet scent air fresheners. One stays in the gym itself and one stays in the back room with the litter box. Between that and regular cleanings, I don’t smell anything. This broom hides behind the door, and it does a good job of cleaning up any stray litter, fur, and dust. And I got a pack of these microfiber clothes to clean the mirrors and wipe down the equipment.
If there was one thing I would change about the gym, I would make the ceiling higher. You might have noticed that I removed the ceiling tiles above the treadmill. That’s because the Peloton Tread has a higher deck than my old treadmill, and my head would otherwise be in the ceiling. As it is, I’ve got just enough room.
I didn’t fully appreciate it when I bought this house, but there are two features that ended up being indispensable. One was this gym and the other is the trail network about a quarter of a mile from my front door.
I needed to do a lot of work to get this gym in a clean, useable condition. But it’s a critical part of keeping me consistent as a runner. I prefer to run outside, but I use my treadmill at least once a week. It’s super convenient for evening doubles, especially now that the sun is going to start going down sooner. And offers a great reprieve from the weather when it’s too hot, cold, rainy, or icy for me to want to go outdoors.
As a runner, if there’s one thing you should absolutely sink some money into … it’s a treadmill.