I’m so excited to share our home gym renovation project! We turned our upstairs small balcony into a beautiful home gym with floor to ceiling windows. Come see the before and after photos.

Our home gym is finally done!

We’ve had construction going on in our house for the last few months to convert our upstairs balcony into a home gym. It was such a fun project, and it turned out so great. I’m so thrilled to finally show it to you!

Why we decided to convert our balcony into a home gym

We originally planned to convert a section of our garage into a gym. We planned and debated for months, but there were just a lot of little issues that always kept us from moving forward on it.

We had a small upstairs balcony that that overlooked our backyard, and although we put some furniture up there, it was constantly filled with dust and bugs and was not enjoyable to sit out there.

In one year, I sat out there literally zero times.

In the spring, I was outside in the backyard swinging Sanny on the swing on our backyard playset, and was chatting with Philip about the garage gym idea. I looked up at the upstairs balcony and the idea hit me — we could convert it into a home gym!

As they say, the rest was history.

How we found a contractor for this project

One of the most frequently asked questions we had about this project was how we found our contractor. Philip went on Houzz and found 5 or 6 contractors whose work he liked. We love using Houzz because it lets you see a lot of their work so you can see if it’s your style before you contact them.

We had 5 contractors come over and give us a quote, and then we chose one from there.

Easy peasy!

What construction was required for converting the balcony into a home gym

Our balcony already had a roof over the top, so that made construction way less complex. One wall was already enclosed with a small cutout, and the other wall had the top half completely open. The third side was completely open with a railing.

We had to enclose the half wall so it mirrored the opposite wall, and installed windows in both of those cut outs. Then we had the railing removed and floor to ceiling windows installed.

We also had HVAC brought in (both an in-vent and an out-vent).

It was really pretty simple, and this part only took about 2 weeks to do.

Other details to convert it into a home gym

We installed interlocking rubber flooring tiles over the concrete, painted the walls light gray, and had a large mirror made for one of the walls (which makes the room feel twice as big)!

Our mirror is 4’x7′, and to purchase a mirror of this size online is outrageously expensive. Our contractor had a mirror guy who made it for us, so it was much cheaper and he made a frame to go around it.

But my friend, Tara, is currently building a home gym and she purchased mirrored sliding closet doors (remember those from the 90’s?) on facebook marketplace for a steal, and with a little work to remove the frame and attach them to the wall, they make really affordable, very large wall mirrors. So that’s another option!

Our equipment we purchased for the home gym

We wanted a treadmill, stationary bike, bench, and free weights for the gym. Everything is linked at the bottom of the post, but we’ve gotten a lot of questions about why we chose NordicTrack.

Philip did tons of research, and although there are so many good treadmills and stationary bikes on the market right now (especially the very popular Peloton), we felt like the NordicTrack commercial series was the best options for us.

The best features for me are the really large screens (they’re much bigger on the commercial series than the standard machines), and I love the built in fan on the treadmill. I use it everyday! Also the incline goes up to 40%, which is insane and amazing.

The library of classes (both live and on demand) is fantastic too. I’ve been loving going through them!

The NordicTrack treadmill and bike each came with 1 free year of iFit, so we got two free years when we purchased both machines (and you can use one membership for both machines, and add multiple users per membership). After that, the monthly membership is significantly less expensive than the Peloton monthly membership.

Links to everything in our home gym

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October 06, 2020

We Converted Our Balcony into a Home Gym!