Since Matt and I decided to turn this room into a home gym, and I had our contractor open up two of the bedroom closets in this room to create this spacious closet space, I’ve had a total the plan is that this space will be used for storage. home gym equipment. I mean, does that make sense? A home gym closet should store home gym equipment.
But this wardrobe 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 be accessible. And yes, I will put the lid back on it. I took this during work on the master bathroom. And don’t worry, our animals are not allowed in this room, so they are not in danger of jumping in there and touching things while the cover is off.
However, what you can’t see in the photo above is that this closet also has access to the attic, as well as access to the scuttle hole in the crawl space under the house. The two access points are on the left side of the closet where you can see the metal ladder folded up and leaning against the wall.
So in addition to the challenges, Matt also suggested to Matt that he should have a game station in this room. If you’ve been here long enough, you know that at one point, this entire room was supposed to be Matt’s playground. He has probably collected 20+ game systems, and the plan is to build a large entertainment system type thing on a wall where he can display all the game consoles and use through one system of switches and who-knows-what. (He made up everything in his mind about how that would work. I don’t know about that stuff.)
Over time, he decided that putting his health first was the right thing to do, so we decided company to make this room into a home gym instead of a play room. (No, I didn’t force him into this decision or take his dream away from him. 😀 He’s a big kid and can make his own decisions, and he decided that not only his health is more important than playing, but me too..)
But even though we agreed that this room would serve us better as a home gym, I still plan to carve out a place where he can do at least two or three of his favorite exercise systems. gaming, as well as a storage area for actual games. and controllers that accompany consoles.
Coming up with a way to fit everything in one 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 it all work is to make or buy something like a small box of drawers that he can use for his game storage, and place that centered in the closet space. And on either side of that, I can build shelves for storing home gym equipment.
But the key is that the shelves cannot be installed permanently. They must be installed in such a way that they can be removed if we need to access the electric panel, the attic access, or the crawlspace scuttle hole.
It’s a pain to take things off the shelves and remove the shelves when we have access to things, but at least we’re at the point in our home remodeling projects where these things don’t need to be -access. on a regular basis.
Our HVAC unit is in the attic, and someone comes and cleans and maintains it twice a year. And now that the master bathroom is done, I think the only time we will need to access the space under the house is if we have a plumbing emergency. So while it’s an inconvenience when the shelves need to be removed, I don’t expect it to be something that needs to happen very often.
So this is my working plan for now. You can tell me if you have a more efficient idea for this space. And really, because I’ve never had a home gym before, and I’m not sure what equipment I’ll be able to get over time (I’m thinking of some hand weights, maybe a bell on kettle or two, exercise bands, etc. things like that), I probably don’t need shelves. If any of you have home gyms, you can offer some insight into what type of storage is 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 purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and is physically unable to work, so I did most of the work at home by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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