Last week, I posted my preliminary plan for the colors and wall design for the home gym. I had decided to go for the bold look of stripes on the walls and ceiling in an ombre rainbow sort of design using stripes that were at least eight inches wide. If you missed that post, you can find it here…
I was pretty excited about that plan, and after doing some quick math, I determined that I’d need 27 colors to do the striped walls, not including the solid end walls. So in all, I’d need 29 colors. I headed to Home Depot and picked out about 100 colors, brought them home, and started eliminating and arranging that selection to get to 27 colors. I took a few pictures along the way so that as I arranged, I could have a reference to go back to in order to remember the arrangements I really liked. This was one such arrangement, although I’m missing a few colors, and it looks like there are some repeats.
When I thought I had the colors just right, it dawned on me that these colors represented actual cans of paint. Paint that costs money. And that I’d actually have to pay for. ?
Hmmm…how much would I need? I’d need enough of each color to do two coats of paint on a stripe that goes up one wall, across the entire ceiling, and down the other wall. Would a quart be enough? I honestly don’t know. But a gallon would be way too much. And there’s no such thing as half gallons. But once you’ve bought two quarts, you’ve paid for a gallon.
I started figuring, and realized that if I could squeak out a full stripe out of one quart of paint (which is questionable since it’s new drywall, and even though I always prime new drywall, that first coat always takes more paint than the rest), I’d be spending a minimum of $550 for the paint, and that doesn’t even include the primer, the rollers, the tape, etc. In my mind, that’s absurd. If one quart wasn’t quite enough for some of those stripes, It could be way more.
That just seems like a ridiculous amount of money to pay for paint for the walls of a home gym, especially when I have big projects coming up like my studio cabinets. I mean, even if I can save $250 to put towards the studio, that would cover the cost of six full sheets of plywood. That would go very far on my studio cabinets if I decide to make them from scratch.
I started narrowing down the colors, and finally came up with this smaller selection of colors…
So now I have the colors I want to use, but I’m back to square one with the design.
I also had to rethink the flooring I was planning to use in the room. I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching flooring for home gyms and the types of flooring that are common, comparing brands, reading countless customer reviews, etc. The most common flooring types are (1) rubber, (2) foam, and (3) very low pile carpet, like a commercial carpet.
After searching and searching, I was leaning towards the carpet, and I found one at Flor that I absolutely love. It’s called Rush Street, and I thought the black was perfect.
The cost for that flooring to cover the whole floor would be about $1200. That just didn’t sit well with me, either. So I kept looking.
The thing I loved the most about the carpet is that it isn’t solid black. It has color variation, so lint won’t show up as much as it would on solid black. All the rubber floors I found seem to be solid black. And actually, most of the foam floors I found came in solid colors as well. Plus, the customer reviews on foam flooring seem to vary pretty wildly.
Then I came across a site called We Sell Mats, and they had all kinds of flooring. But all of their foam mat floors had incredibly high customer ratings and rave reviews. They have two in particular that really caught my eye. One is this printed foam mat called Forest Floor in the color Carbon.
I can do the entire floor in that room for $350, and I love that the color is varied and not solid black. I was poking around on their Instagram page, and they had linked to this man’s gym where he used this exact foam tile on his floor. I think it looks amazing! And if you watch how active he is in his videos, the floor seems to be very durable. And again, those customer reviews have me sold.
They also have this version, which is a more traditional wood grain look…
I really like both of those, but I prefer the first one. I like that it has more of a modern look to it, so that’s the one I went with. I’ve decided not to refinish the hardwood floor in that room since I’ll just be covering the floor with foam mats anyway. Going to all that trouble and cost to refinishing the floor just to cover it up seems like a big waste of time and money. So as soon as I get the rest of the hardwood flooring installed in the closet area, I can just clean the floor and then install the floor mats. This room could have a finished floor very soon!
And that means that I need to decide on my walls since those need to be done before the mats are installed. *Sigh* Maybe a color block design?
So in the end, I had to compromise on both the walls and the floor in the home gym. But at a savings of $850 on the floor, and a potential savings of about $250 on the walls, that’s $1100 that can be better spent on my studio cabinets. I think I can live with that.
