Sunday, July 12, 2009

Workout room progress

This is how the workout room originally started out:


There was a door to the lower bathroom, and that bathroom was a passthrough bathroom. From the earlier blog posts, the doorway to the bathroom in the workout room has been walled up. We removed the original bi-fold door on the closet and removed all of the old shelving. The closet was re-textured in hawk & trowel and painted Behr Lilac Tan. Zac then built custom shelving to maximize storage space in this closet.


The shelving was caulked where it meets the wall, and the shelves were painted Behr Bison Brown. The door trim was also painted the same color brown.


A short clothes hanger bar was fitted and spray painted brown to match before final install. (Shown in white here before painting).

Here is the completed closet. Bike helmets on the top row, and 2 rows of hooks from Target organize the Camelbak bladders and packs.

On the top left is a cloth laundry bin that I found at Target that matches the brown of the shelving perfectly. All of the mountain bike body armor fits in there. On the hanger bar are all of the biking jackets, vests, rain gear, and my triathlon wetsuits.


A view of the body armor bin:

Below the hanging clothes are our bike panniers for commuting. The Joe Blow pump is in the middle for easy access. On the floor are 2 samples of the carpet tile we will be installing. The tile is Carpet-Tile from Allied Products. It's a polypropylene fiber tile that is anti-microbial, which will work good for a fitness room. We purchased Lichen green in the diagonal pattern. The tiles are not installed yet because we need to install the tiles in the room first. And the room needs to have drywall re-texturing and paint done first. I took a sample of the carpet tile to Home Depot and scanned it to find Behr Bison Brown matches the brown in between the green stripes on the tiles. So this is why the shelves and trim work are brown.

Below the bottom shelf is a brown wood shoe organizer for all of our bike shoes. On the shelf above that are 2 bins that contain bike tools, spare parts, tires, and tubes. A small open bin next to the middle purple bin holds all of the spare bike seats.

The next shelf has 2 more lidded bins with spare bike parts, tools, tires, and tubes. It makes it easy to just grab these bins and throw them in the car for race weekends. The open bin on this shelf stores all of our cycling gloves.


Three more open bins on the next shelf contain all headlamps and rear blinkie lights, swim gear (caps, shower kits, booties), and sunscreen. Top shelf for helmets.

We have to finish the drywall work to the room before the closet door can be completed. The workout room is sitting at an intermediate phase right now where it is organized and functional, yet not finished. Right now we have to turn our attention to remodeling an upstairs bathroom that started to leak. I may begin drywall work on this room while Zac works the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom, since 2 people can't work in a tight bathroom at the same time.

This is how the room will be organized when done, just with finished and painted walls. A small hook shelf organizes all bike locks and running hats. Two bike racks hold one of my bikes and Zac's cyclocross bike on the wall. The bike trainer sits below the bike storage with the oscillating fan for additional circulation (there is a ceiling fan in this room, which is not shown). Behind the bikes you can see the patched wall where the door to the bathroom was.




Another view of the room. The front door to the house can be seen from the workout room, to put into perspective where this room is located. I have a towel rack near the door that is used for drying all wet swim gear. The color spot by the doorway was a test spot of the Behr Lilac Tan.


This is the window in this room, with the weight set below it. Eventually Zac will build a weight tree that will fit behind the closet door. Our plan is to tear out this window and put in a french door with a small porch outside. This will make it easier to get the bikes in and out of this room. There is a wall directly across from the front entry door, which makes it too tight to maneuver bikes in and out, and it ends up scuffing the wall. With a door in the workout room, the bikes can easily roll in and out. We have views of the Catalina mountains outside this window, so my plan is to landscape a nice porch with desert plants outside so that there is a nice view while one is slogging away on the bike trainer inside (usually in the winter time).

I have another hook system by the door which is where my heavily-used bags reside. These are the swim, run, bike, and gear bags that are used several times a week. Eventually the TV will be replaced with a flat screen mounted to the wall, and we are planning on getting a TV with the DVD player built in. This will add some more space in the room. The spot on the wall to the right is another paint test spot.

Zac and I share the bike trainer, which is why we have 2 wall mounted bike racks. We have enough room to put the 3rd bike on the floor under one of the bike racks for when the trainer isn't in use. The mat gets rolled up and there's a lot more floorspace in case it's needed for workouts. I'm planning on leaving the original carpet in place as a drop cloth while I do all the drywall and paint work, and then will rip that out last and replace with the carpet tile.

Only the commuter and tri bikes live in the workout room. The mountain bikes live in the garage for now. Our plan is to build an east wing onto the garage which will be a bike storage area for the mountain bikes.