Gym Make-Over

I've been mostly focusing on what's been happening outside at our house lately.  But, we've had some stuff going on inside, too.

Remember our gym, from the house tour I gave back in February?

It's a perfect room, off the far end of the basement, for a home gym.  It's far from other bedrooms, and stays nice and cool.  In my mind, the only thing that would make it better was adding a ceiling fan, and ripping out the carpet and replacing with some sort of hard-surface flooring.

Well, in January, we had a handyman here working on some wiring and small maintenance projects.  One of those projects was moving the ceiling fan from the master bedroom (since we were replacing it with the chandelier during our room make-over) to the gym (which also required installing a support box in the ceiling for the fan).  Check the fan off the list!

Then, one afternoon, right after our big snowfall and rapid melt-away, I walked barefoot into the gym and found myself standing on soggy carpet.  A little investigation revealed that there was some sort of leak coming from the wall by the window, which had left some of the drywall soggy, as well as a section of the carpet.  Further inspection revealed mold inside the wall, which indicated this was not a new problem.

So the good news?  I got to have the carpet ripped out of the gym, like I had wanted.  The not-so-good news?  Our pocket book is lighter and the gym was quarantined for about six weeks until the work was all completed (by mold-certified professionals). 

The room has been completed for a couple of weeks now, and I am finally back into using it on a regular basis.  Yay!

For the flooring, we went with stained concrete.  Since the room is in our basement, we already had concrete slab under the carpet.  So we just had the existing concrete stained and sealed.

The color is hard to see from the pictures.  It was a three-color process, starting with a steel grey, then a charcoal, then finished off with a milk chocolate.  It's the perfect blend of cool and warm tones, and I love it.

We still have some plans for this room, like installing large mirrors on the walls, mounting a TV on the wall, and maybe adding some more equipment like a pull-up bar and some weights.  But first, back to yard work....