Spare Bedroom to Home Gym Renovation

As part of our basement renovation I wanted to transform the unused spare bedroom into a home gym space. It was a wasted space for us, being used as kind of a catch-all junk room and I wanted to give it purpose and intention. My husband and I are both active people, so having a space for a stationary bike, weights and yoga would work well for our lifestyle, especially in the winter when going outside is not an option for us.

The Before

To access the bedroom you had to walk through a hallway and it felt like it was tucked away in the very back corner of the basement. This didn’t feel like an inviting space where I wanted to spend time and workout, so my plan was to remove a wall and open it up to the rest of the basement. We would replace the wall with some nice glass doors that offered an open and airy feel, yet still provided some sound proofing since both may husband and I work from home.

The first step was removing all of the trim around the floor, doors and window, and then tackling the flooring. This room had carpet on top of tile, which was a huge pain in the a$$ to remove.

Next was removing the drywall on the wall to be removed, which revealed it was a load bearing wall as we had expected. This was not something we were comfortable doing so we hired a professional to re-support the wall and open it up safely. At this point we also had him close off the original door entrance to the room, as we no longer needed it and wanted to maximize all the wall space for exercise equipment and mirrors.

Now that the wall was reframed and opened up I was able to start on the floor prep. The majority of the basement had tile flooring, and instead of spending the next 10 years ripping it up and breaking my back we decided to lay vinyl flooring right on top. Since the tile was in good shape and level, this was a good option for us.

The new gym area was now a different height from the rest of the basement so we needed to match the height and make sure it was flat and level to be able to lay the new LVP. In order to achieve this we used a few layers of LevelQuik self leveling compound until it was feathered out enough to get us within the tolerance of the flooring.

Before I laid my new floor I wanted to get all the painting out of the way, so I had that knocked out before I started on the floor prep. I chose a grey-blue color called Wolf Gray by Benjamin Moore for the gym room to give a splash of color yet also keep it neutral. For the rest of the basement I used Antique Pewter, a griege-taupe color that really warms up the space. As soon as the painting was done we started mixing and pouring the LevelQuik.

After the leveling compound was dried and cured for a couple days I could start installing the LVP flooring. I started against the wall in the farthest corner and laid my planks long ways, working my way through the basement. After the flooring was installed we had the glass doors hung, and then I cut and installed the trim for all the baseboards, doors and windows.

This was such an exciting moment seeing everything come together and my vision come to life! While not an easy project, it made such an impact. The once unused bedroom is now a utilized, functional and intentional space that fits our lifestyle. We use it every day and it makes such a positive impact on our lives!