Ever since Matt and I decided to turn this room into a home gym, and I had our contractor open up both bedroom closets to this room to create this wide closet space, I’ve had a general plan that this space would be used to store home gym equipment. I mean, that makes sense right? A home gym closet should store home gym equipment.
But this closet is a tricky one. As you can see in the photo above, our electric panel is on the back wall of this closet, so it needs to remain accessible. And yes, I will put the cover back on it. I took it off during the work on the master bathroom. And don’t worry, our animals aren’t allowed in this room, so they’re in no danger of jumping up there and touching things while the cover is off.
Anyway, what you can’t really see in the photo above is that this closet also houses the attic access, as well as the scuttle hole access to the crawl space underneath the house. Both of those access points are on the left side of the closet where you see the metal ladder folded up and leaning against the wall.
So in addition to those challenges, Matt also suggested to Matt that he should have a gaming station in this room. If you’ve been here a while, you know that at one time, this entire room was supposed to be Matt’s gaming room. He has collected probably 20+ gaming systems, and the plan was to build a massive entertainment system type of thing on one wall where he could have all of those gaming consoles displayed and usable through a system of switches and who-knows-what. (He had it all worked out in his mind how that would work. I don’t know anything about that stuff.)
As time went on, he decided that putting more of a priority on his health was the smart thing to do, so we decided together to turn this room into a home gym in stead of a gaming room. (No, I didn’t force him into this decision or take away his dream from him. ? He’s a big boy and can make his own decisions, and he decided that not only is his health more important than gaming, but so is mine.)
But even with us agreeing that this room would better serve us as a home gym, I still planned to carve out some space where he could at least have two or three of his favorite gaming systems, as well as some storage space for the actual games and controllers that go with the consoles.
Coming up with a way to fit all of that into a closet with an electrical panel, attic access, and crawlspace scuttle hole doesn’t really leave me with many options that I can think of. The only way I can think of to make all of that work is to build or buy something like a small chest of drawers that he can use for his gaming storage, and place that centered in the closet space. And the on either side of that, I can build shelves for storage of home gym equipment.
But the key is that the shelves couldn’t be installed permanently. They would have to be installed in such a way that they can be lifted out if we need to access the electric panel, the attic access, or the crawlspace scuttle hole.
It would definitely be a pain to have to clear the stuff off of the shelves and remove the shelves when we access those things, but at least we’re to the point in our home remodeling projects that these things aren’t having to be accessed on a constant basis.
Our HVAC unit is in the attic, and we have someone come and do cleaning and maintenance on the twice a year. And now that the master bathroom is done, I think the only time we’d need to access the crawl space under the house is if we having a plumbing emergency. So while it would be an inconvenience when the shelves do need to be removed, I don’t foresee that being a thing that needs to happen often.
So that’s my working plan for now. You can tell me if you have a more efficient idea for this space. And really, since I’ve never had a home gym before, and I’m not quite sure what equipment I may be acquiring as time goes on (I imagine some hand weights, maybe a kettle bell or two, exercise bands, and other things like that), maybe I don’t even need shelves. If any of you have home gyms, maybe you can offer some insight on what type of storage works best for you.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I hope you’ll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you’ll never miss a thing!
