Our Home Gym-To-Bedroom Conversion Begins!
I’m back, y’all! Last week was a long and busy week for me. I hope you saw my note that I put at the top of the previous post when I realized I was going to be away from the blog for an extended period of time. I needed last week away from the computer, and away from bloggable projects, so that I could laser focus on getting ready for workers to be in the house beginning today.
I was notified on Sunday, August 26th, that the guys would be able to start ripping up the floor and subfloor in the home gym on Monday, September 2nd. We didn’t realize that that day was a holiday, so the start day was actually pushed to today. But that gave me a week to clear out the home gym, find a place to put all of the equipment we want to keep, get rid of what we don’t want to keep, and be ready for them to start on the floor today.
So I spent every day last week doing just that. I had to start by clearing out a large enough space in the sunroom to store most of the home gym equipment. That was NOT an easy job. That sunroom has been an out-of-control mess for years now. And the side of the room where I wanted to store the exercise equipment (i.e., the side where I have the washer and dryer) was piled with boxes that were filled with stuff that I hadn’t gone through for years.
Since this sunroom needs to be completely cleared out before we do our kitchen addition (because the sunroom will actually be torn down completely), I didn’t want to simply move the boxes from one side of the room to the other. I wanted to actually open the boxes and deal with the contents. That was the slowest job of the entire week.
I had boxes filled with papers that were 20+ years old! There were big files filled with all of my classroom work from when I lived in Istanbul and went to Turkish language school. I hadn’t thrown away a single paper from those classes, and that was back in 2001!! I had more files filled with receipts from every bill I ever paid while living in Turkey, from rent, to gas, to electricity. Other files were filled with the letters that Matt and I wrote to each other before we got married.
I also came across boxes filled with items from my old interior decorating business when I officed out of a local furniture and decor store called Spice here in Waco. Anyway, you get the idea. So much of the week was like a trip down memory lane. I enjoyed the memories, but going through boxes of papers, and making sure I didn’t throw away anything important, is such a boring and tedious task.
But I finally got it done, and then I was ready to move everything out of the home gym. So here’s our home gym packed away in the corner of the sunroom for now.
This whole process was bittersweet. I so enjoyed having this home gym for the 17 months that we had it. It was so functional and convenient, and I loved being surrounded by so much color. I’ll miss it. At the same time, I’m also very excited about turning this into our permanent bedroom.
But it was a little sad taking this room that I had poured so much time into…
…and undoing, and ripping out, and going backwards. So here’s what I’m left with after last week.
Once all of the carpet tiles were up, I could see all of the damage they had caused to the hardwood floor. It’s a bit shocking to see it all at once. The floor was in rough shape when I put the carpet tiles down, but other than the one floor board that was damaged, the rest of the hardwood floor just needed to be sanded and refinished. But now, sanding and refinishing couldn’t save these floors.
It’s hard to capture the extent of the damage in pictures. If you’re not standing in the room and walking on the floor, it’s hard to get an idea of just how unlevel and uneven the floor is.
But just imagine that everywhere there’s a floor joist, there’s a pretty high ridge, and then there are valleys on either side of those ridges. And once I got all of the carpet tiles up, I realized that there are way more ridges that I had previously thought.
I thought the one that I had previously showed y’all was the worst.
As it turns out, it was just more noticeable because it was closer to the middle of the room, so it was in the path where I walked the most.
There’s another one that’s far worse. This ridge is so high that it cracked the hardwood floor board.
And again, just to be clear, that is not the hardwood floor buckling and being pushed up towards the ceiling. That high ridge is the floor sitting directly on the floor joist, and the flooring on either side bowing towards the ground. The strange thing is that the floor still feels strong. It doesn’t feel spongy or weak.
What really shocked me is that when I took the carpet squares up around the perimeter of the room, there was quite a bit of moisture under them. I’ve had the carpet tiles removed from the entire center of the room for weeks now. The middle of the floor had completely dried out. For some reason, I thought that having the large center area of the room uncovered would be enough for the moisture to escape and evaporate, but that wasn’t the case. There was still quite a bit of moisture being trapped under these perimeter tiles. All of the dark streaks in the photo below are from water.
I just can’t believe the damage done to these floors. It’s so disheartening.
But at the same time, I find myself feeling thankful. It’s this floor damage that caused me to pause, take another look at our house floor plan, reevaluate how we’re using the spaces we already have, and change course on the long-term plans I’ve had for our house for years now. This floor damage saved us from taking on quite a bit of debt, and it made us reassess the scale of the addition we want to build.
I’m so thankful for that. If it weren’t for this floor damage, I’d still be pushing to do a big 1350 square foot addition, which would put us in debt by about $120,000. And now, because of this floor damage, we’ll be living with the space we have for the most part, only adding a kitchen, and doing all of that while staying debt-free. It’s a good life lesson, isn’t it? Sometimes those terrible things that happen are actually blessings in the end. Not always, but definitely sometimes.
It was a very productive week. I still have the other half of the sunroom to go through, organize, and purge before the room can be torn down. But we’re not ready to start the kitchen addition just yet, so there’s no time crunch to get that half of the room done. For now, I’ve done all I need to do in there.
So for now, the work will get started in the gym (soon to be bedroom). It will probably take a few days for them to get their part done, and then it will be up to me to install and finish the new flooring. In addition to that, we’re probably one to two weeks away from my workshop being built. My permit was approved, so my storage building is in production. They’ll build it on site, but I think they’ll have things like the trusses pre-built before they arrive on site, so those things are in the production line right now. And then after the gym-to-bedroom conversion is finished, and we’re moved into that room, I’ll start turning the current guest bedroom into our closet and workout space. And probably while that’s being done, the work on the kitchen will start, and that project will begin with the tearing down of the sunroom.
Things are about to ramp up around here. It’s going to get exciting!
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.
Would a vapor barrier under the house prevented this? Or was it possibly just humidity in the house and the tiles couldn’t breathe.
I bet it felt great to get that sun room cleaned out!! Good job!
Glad you are back. I missed your posts! So happy you can see the positive of the situation and that in the end, it all worked out for the best. I’m anxious to see the progress as you move ahead with the new plans.
Is there any way to recover the cost of the damage to your floors, from that floor tile company? I wonder how many other homeowners have gone through this kind of damage to their floors using this product. I’m glad you brought attention to it to warn other possible customers who might be considering these floor tiles!
Did you ever get in touch with Insurance Company or the flooring company?
I love that you can see the silver lining to this sad situation. I think it’s worth the effort to find that silver lining and find gratitude even in the difficult times. Thanks for the lesson.
I’m excited to see how all this comes together! Onward!
It is exciting. You’ll be running on adrenalin for months. I loved the paint job in the gym, as I know you did. Sad to see it go, but looking forward to your next creative effort.
Happy you are back and anxious to watch all the changes.
You are going to be juggling a lot of moving parts in the next few months! Good luck – I’ll be hear virtually cheering you on.
I must have missed your post on getting the permit for the workshop; glad you’re getting it started.
Same with the new bedroom floor. Way to make lemonade out of lemons.
Wow, that flooring looks bad! I hope you are sending detailed photos to the carpet square company, as well as your insurance! I wouldn’t wait to the last minute to get the sunroom cleared out. I would hate to see you just move stuff from one place to another, over and over again. Yay to progress and the upcoming changes!
Kristi, seeing the damage on your previous gym room is just devastating to me. It is a miracle you noticed the first damage and called in people to confirm the entire damage of the floor. Now you can go on and be absolutely sure your new bedroom floor will be fully secure. I’m looking forward to watching the development of it.
To tell you the truth I miss your gym. It was the most exciting colorful and beautiful gym I’ve ever seen. I’m sure glad you keep photos of your DIY work, because I can refer back to them. I love showing your work to my family and friends. I admit they don’t get as excited as I do, but they Ohh and Ahh when I show them your photos out of respect to me.
Your sunroom now looks 100% better….good for you Kristi for getting things done. I’m glad you have all of your GYM room stuff safe….for future genius ideas.
All the best!
What a dramatic lesson in horrible things turning out for the best! I love your new plan, and debt free is unbeatable! But wow… that floor. 😲
How exciting. Save some of the good floorboards to use in the remodel. They would work as fill in when you move walls and doorways. I am so excited to watch everything to come, I love remodeling.
I sure loved the energetic vibe of your workout room and I’m sad to see it go. But I’m cheering you on for its transformation into space that works best for the two of you.
It’s sad that you are losing that amazing workout space, but it appears there is a purpose to the change, and you still educated all of us in the process. I’m going to miss the “sweat the crazy out” neon sign. I’ve been on the hunt to find one for my new Kristi inspired space.
You are going to be busy…..well, busier than normal.
May I make a suggestion? Before you totally, 100% commit to the idea of using part of what will become your bedroom closet as a workout space, consider other possible workout space solutions. Your workout space needs to be able to be separately ventilated–for reasons of accumulated humidity and Matt’s comfort while working out, and also because over time your clothes are just going to absorb and retain that boys’ high school gym locker room odor! Everything will begin to smell like cheap gin and dirty sweat socks, and it quickly becomes permanent. I urge you to rethink this idea if you don’t want everything you own to smell like the inside of a teenage boy’s gym shoe. There’s got to be another space you can either convert or add onto cheaply without going into debt for a workout area.
I am 100% open to suggestions! If someone could look at our floor plan and come up with another location for our workout room, I’d love it. I would much rather not have my closet/storage share space with workout equipment. But so far, I haven’t come up with another option.
A couple of possibilities I would consider: A) take up part of what you have plotted as the back deck off your large back bathroom. Currently, you have depicted french doors leading from the bathroom to . . . nowhere. I’d frame in part of that end of the deck to create a workout area. B) the front of the house off the front bedroom, where your plan shows doors leading to . . . what? Could that area be framed in so that you pass through a new workout area on the way to wherever those doors currently open to? C) Maybe run your plan through an architect on a preliminary basis to see if there’s something that can be done off the new kitchen, or in the space between the new kitchen and the carport. Something to make use of that space near the ramp. There’s got to be a way to do something there. D) Failing everything else, maybe add a workout shed onto the new workshop? Of course you have to be able to maneuver Matt in/out of there, but that could become the start of a project to create the pathways that will eventually enable him to move about the yard and outbuildings.
I’m so glad you are back! I’m excited to see all the changes, but so very sad to see the wall in the guest bedroom go. I absolutely loved what you did in that room and all the work on that beautiful blue wall.
I have the question like everyone else; can you recoup any cost from the tile people? Was there any warnings this would happen? I can’t imagine that you would miss that, I know how thorough you are.