The new exercise/game room: phase 1

The new exercise/game room: phase 1

Hi guys! I hope you had a great weekend! We did so much, between date night at Spice Kitchen on Friday (sooo good), watching Guardians of the Galaxy on Saturday (also sooo good), and working on no less than four ongoing projects… that STILL aren’t done. But all is not lost, because we also decided to start on a brand new project: our new exercise/game room.

We have a finished attic that has two bedrooms and a half bath, but at this point we pretty much just use it all for storage, and occasionally running on the treadmill. We have decided to turn the bigger of the two bedrooms into an exercise/game room. Andy would like a place where he can play video games without annoying me (some of them have horrible music that drives me insane) and we’d also like an area with enough floor space to be able to do some exercising, maybe watch some workout videos. This room has a ton of potential, but it’s starting from nothing.

This is one of those posts that’s embarrassing, because you get to see what some of the parts of our house look like that aren’t so neat and tidy and are actually kind of gross. Do other people have spaces that look like this? I hope it’s not just us. It’s also embarrassing because this project is in no way done. Not even close. But you have to start somewhere. This is where we started:

A lot of junk. Peachy tan walls. Dirty old carpet. An old boxspring the previous owners left behind because it’s too big to go down the stairs (they had to take apart the stairs to get it up). Musical instruments (the big thing next to the dresser is a vibraharp that belonged to Andy’s grandpa). An old dresser the previous owners also left… And did I mention there’s a lot of junk?

This is how you dismantle a boxspring by hand.

This is going to be a multi-phase project. In Phase One we pulled apart that boxspring and took all the pieces out to the trash. We organized the junk as much as possible, making a huge Goodwill pile and loading up the closet with the rest. Then we added a new, very inexpensive TV stand and put down the polka dot rugs that used to be in our living room. This is what we have now:

It’s better. We still have a long way to go for this to be the cool, cozy, lounge-y space we envision, but at least now we have space to do a few burpees. Not that we want to do burpees.

So what’s next:

• Paint. Ugh, paint. It needs it so bad. This paint color just makes the room feel so dirty. It’s going super crisp, clean, fresh white on the walls, ceiling and trim.
• Seating. We want this space to have a lounge-y vibe where Andy can play video games and maybe both of us will want to watch movies up here, but we can’t fit a couch or big chairs up the super narrow stairs. We’re leaning toward just a big pile of bean bags and pillows.
• Art. Comic book posters, of course! This is more Andy’s space than mine (but we will NOT use the term “man cave”).
• Curtains. Even Andy suggested that we need to replace the curtains. That means we really need to!
• Maybe one day we’ll rip out the carpet. I’m sure there’s wood floors underneath, but that’s a big job and a low priority. For now it’s nice just to have most of it covered up with the rugs.

We’re excited about all the potential this room has. I think we can turn it into something pretty cool without spending very much money or investing a whole lot of time. What do you think so far?

— Kerry