DIY Garage Gym
This project somehow feels both completely logical and totally impulsive. After six years of treating our garage as nothing more than a place for cars, we decided to transform it into a gym.
I’ve never been someone who loves going to the gym, and Corban doesn’t have the time to fit in workouts outside the house. After rowing in college, he’s dreamed of having a squat rack and a dedicated workout space for years. We both grew up in “cars go in the garage” households, but the reality was that we were already spilling fitness equipment into every corner of our home—his bike on a trainer behind the car, my Peloton parked in the bedroom. So we finally said enough was enough, painted our 30+ year unpainted garage, and created an intentional space for all of us to move and use.
We decided in August that matte black for the color and once that decision was made, primer and paint were the first steps. We bought some garage gym puzzle flooring from Costco, found a Rogue squat rack on Facebook marketplace and ordered the bar and plates from Homegrown Lifting. The weight bench and resistance bands were from amazon and so was round two of weight plate storage and spotter arms because the first set we got were the wrong size for our rack. We got acoustic wood slat panels for a feature wall and Corban did an incredible job even though he had to cut a ton of pieces to go around the conduit from the outlets we added a few years ago. We got hooks to hang bike shoes and other little accessories from the conduit and then moved all of my yoga/pilates/bar stuff out with the Peloton. My stuff was the last to go out because it needed to feel nice before I was willing to do classes on the garage floor. We brought my Peloton out November 23, about 2 months after we began. I was worried about working out in the cold garage but so far so good!
Someone has been out in the garage at least once a day using this space since it’s been usable and we are loving it! Corban’s brother is regularly weight training with us, we had all his siblings over on Black Friday to lift and spin and it’s been such a great investment. Totally worth us having a gym instead of a dry place for our cars in this season of our life and we are so glad we did this!
If you are interested in reading other ways we have made the garage work better for us over the years, you can read one instance of that here. We used to have our pantry out in the garage as well. And we insulated it a few years ago which is making a big difference still.
