How to build a home gym that actually inspires you to workout...

starting a fitness challenge together.

My GYM!

If you’re reading this, I want you to have one takeaway—invest in yourself and what makes you happy in your own home.

This space is a space I get to truly call my own creation! Ever since the pandemic, I have invested in making my own home gym because when we had nowhere to go I needed this place to work on myself. It kept me sane and healthy. My first home gym was at my moms house in a little car port that we closed in. When I bought the new house, it came with a two car garage and my eyes lit up. I knew I was about to make the best home gym ever!

Before:

The first thing we did was knocked out the bump out from the old fire place. The previous homeowners got rid of the fire place and ran ac upstairs. Once we did that, I had to figure out how to hide the ugly ac unit and ducts. We moved one AC unit to a linen closet in the bath room and we enclosed the other one and created a utility room. This now gave us room to put in the protein bar and a much needed storage room.

Once the rough construction was done, it was time to paint and get this room going! We started with just painting the walls. Lesson here was it wasn’t enough, didn’t really inspire us to want to work out in there—we basically color drenched the whole room! It was one big black dark hole! (see video below). So we had to give it some life now. We started with putting up the slat wall over the utility room. This gave the room an accent wall and I think it really gives it a nice pop.

Once that was installed, it was time for the kitchen design. I wanted the kitchen to have a more modern look so we went with flat panel cabinets. We added these super cheap drawer pulls from Amazon that were very minimal. I found the coolest countertop at my stone fabricators yard. It was leftover remnants from a previous job so it was much cheaper than having to buy a whole slab. It is a leathered quarts that has tons of colors in it. Reminds me of stars in the sky. I followed that up with a thin rectangle backsplash that you can find at floor and decor.

The floors have two different surfaces. It is super important when building your gym to get the proper floors installed. The best ones I have found are the rubber mats that you can find at tractor supply. They make puzzle piece ones you can buy as well, they just tear up faster. I used a hexagon tile to give the spaces some separation from the gym area to the protein bar. I also thought the hexagon tiles would play into the hexagon over head lighting nicely which they did.

Once all that was done, it was time to fill it up with meaning and memorabilia. I had all of my jerseys and marathon badges framed from Framebridge. Tate got me a red Make Momma Proud sign that means the world to me. All of it was finished with 3 space heaters because I like my gym HOT, even living in South Florida.

Does anyone want to go on a wellness journey with me? I’m about to start a 45 day challenge, comment/like this if you’re interested and I’ll work on something for us to do together.