New house, new renovation project :)

Gabe said:

Started making a workout area in the basement, and since it's wide open down there I made up a wood brace for the pull-up bar to hang off of.
It works great and if I decide to remove it, removing a few screws is all it would take to do so.

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Have you taking a full picture of the basement yet? I don't remember seeing one in this thread.

Shaggy said:

Have you taking a full picture of the basement yet? I don't remember seeing one in this thread.

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I have, but it's been such a dumping ground for "stuff", for so long, that only recently have we started actually having some space again down there.

More work in the basement last couple of days.

The area immediately to the right (after going down the stairs into the basement) is slowly being turned into a workout area.
A wall down there was never painted by the previous owner, and it used to have some shelves on it along with a work bench.
Yesterday I started working on making the wall more presentable. Had to apply some joint compound in several places to repair old screw holes and other damage:




In that ^^ pic the door all the way to the right goes to the garage, the door in the middle goes upstairs, and the door to the left goes to the storage area I recently stuffed full of crap.

Today I applied a coat of primer on that wall, the left door, and around those doors, making that area a lot better looking, and will soon apply some white paint, to brighten up that area some more.
I will eventually build some storage system for dumbbells and other workout equipment and most likely mount it right to the wall
I also threw some primer on 2 of the support poles there, to get rid of the old brown/rusty look on them:

^ White is ok but it needs some color! My first house had a lot of white until my sister came over and helped me pick colors for the walls. My current house was white on white on white and I've eliminated almost all of it.

Not trying to be critical, just offering a suggestion. Have a little fun with it and splash some color on the wall there. Too much white can look a bit antiseptic.

skwerl said:

^ White is ok but it needs some color! My first house had a lot of white until my sister came over and helped me pick colors for the walls. My current house was white on white on white and I've eliminated almost all of it.

Not trying to be critical, just offering a suggestion. Have a little fun with it and splash some color on the wall there. Too much white can look a bit antiseptic.

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It's gonna be temporary, until the basement gets finished.
We totally understand the idea that all white looks like a hospital, lol.
We don't want that.
Just using paint we have, and white will brighten things up a bit there too.
When it gets finished, the cement half-wall will get covered up, a new floor will be put down, and we will definitely have something other than white on the walls.

How big is the basement, sq footage wise?

Are you planning to make the whole basement a workout room? If so, go with those rubber mats and lay them down on the concrete. Makes a better surface for weights.

Shaggy said:

How big is the basement, sq footage wise?

Are you planning to make the whole basement a workout room? If so, go with those rubber mats and lay them down on the concrete. Makes a better surface for weights.

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Not sure about the square footage, the area we're gonna use is roughly 11' x 12', maybe 11' x 13'

And yeah I want to paint the floor to get rid of the 1972 look, and then we're looking into grabbing a few horse-stall mats, the same mats our Crossfit gym is using. Spoke with the owners today and they gave us a tip on where to get them for a decent price.

Gabe said:

Not sure about the square footage, the area we're gonna use is roughly 11' x 12', maybe 11' x 13'

And yeah I want to paint the floor to get rid of the 1972 look, and then we're looking into grabbing a few horse-stall mats, the same mats our Crossfit gym is using. Spoke with the owners today and they gave us a tip on where to get them for a decent price.

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Where you getting them a decent price?

Shaggy said:

Where you getting them a decent price?

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A nearby farm-supply place.
We have yet to go by there to get their price, but I found 4'x6' horse stall mats, 3/4" thick, for $40 each at Tractor Supply.

Oh, and I measured down there yesterday ... the usable space is about 20' x 22'
There's more room than that but there's things like the oil tank/furnace/well tank taking up space
I plan on taking up 10-11' x 14' for now, for the home gym.
Not a huge rush to get that done since we're both going to a Crossfit gym 1-2 times/week, but if I had a good place to work out at home I'd most likely take on my P90X program again.
I did 60 days of the 90-day program back in 2011 and I lost weight, bulked up, lost my gut, and had tons of energy ... I was in the best shape of my life.

Gabe said:

I found 4'x6' horse stall mats, 3/4" thick, for $40 each at Tractor Supply.

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Also a good solution for winter truck bed weight, I'm going to have to grab one for my new to me F150. Should be better than sandbags that moved back when I had Rangers. They're building a TS about 1/4 mile from work, can't wait for it to open the closest to home otherwise is 45minutes.

Gabe said:

A nearby farm-supply place.
We have yet to go by there to get their price, but I found 4'x6' horse stall mats, 3/4" thick, for $40 each at Tractor Supply.

Oh, and I measured down there yesterday ... the usable space is about 20' x 22'
There's more room than that but there's things like the oil tank/furnace/well tank taking up space
I plan on taking up 10-11' x 14' for now, for the home gym.
Not a huge rush to get that done since we're both going to a Crossfit gym 1-2 times/week, but if I had a good place to work out at home I'd most likely take on my P90X program again.
I did 60 days of the 90-day program back in 2011 and I lost weight, bulked up, lost my gut, and had tons of energy ... I was in the best shape of my life.

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Been wanting to try out P90X. I was into Insanity and do well with that a few years ago.

Shaggy said:

Been wanting to try out P90X. I was into Insanity and do well with that a few years ago.

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I did about a month of Insanity after the P90X
I had a hard time with it, it was a bit too hard core for me, I kept losing my breath, a 25-minute video would take me over an hour to complete ...

Gabe said:

I did about a month of Insanity after the P90X
I had a hard time with it, it was a bit too hard core for me, I kept losing my breath, a 25-minute video would take me over an hour to complete ...

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Even the guys behind Shawn T were having a hard time with it.

Today I put a coat of paint on the ceiling in the basement, regular white ceiling paint, and I also painted the wall I've recently been working on, and 2 of the doors down there as well.
Did the ceiling mostly to brighten things up down there.
The old beige paint was really darkening the place up.
Much better with the white on there.
I wasn't super careful to get it into corners and such, since eventually we'll be doing a dropped ceiling down there, and the painted ceiling will get covered anyway.
But we wanted more light and the white paint did it.

The wall I covered in a paint we had left over from the upstairs, something very light called French Cotton.
Not quite white, not beige either.
Just a little bit of cream in it so it's not white.




And the area that's soon gonna have six 4' x 6' horse stall mats in it, for the home gym:

Nice. What are you planning to add down there as in equipment.

Shaggy said:

Nice. What are you planning to add down there as in equipment.

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It's not gonna be anything big.
Looking to score a deal on some dumbbell racks, and maybe do a bench press set-up.
But I want the floor to be as free as possible for yoga and other floor exercises.
I want to re-start my P90X and you need floor space for that.

Got sick of all the chipmunks, moles, voles, mice, and God knows whatever other critter is out in the yard and trying to make its way into/under the foundation of the house, and planted a couple of water-bucket traps.

Within 24 hours this little bastard:




Went swimming and became a floater:




Second bucket caught even more:





Bucket is half-full with water and I smeared some peanut butter on the inside, to attract the little shits.
It works like a charm!

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Got the new rubber mats in the workout area in the basement.
Need to clean them up a bit, make some stands for the weights, get a TV down there with a DVD player, and get back to working out at home!
The mats are 10' wide, 14' long, last one sitting right under the pull-up bar.

Not much done to the house for a while, but today my brother in law and I finally tackled the installation of the wavy tile we had bought for the area above the stove.
We intentionally went with something wavy and not square, to hide any imperfections in the vertical alignment between the edge of the upper cabinets and the edges of the stove (on the right there's about a 1/8" width difference between top and bottom)

We plan on having a matching granite piece cut for the area below the white tile, to carry the black "leathered"-look backsplash behind the stove.

So far, we're really happy with finally getting the tile installed:

Painted the 2 doors at the end of the hallway and the bathroom door (the teal door) today.
3 doors left to do, plus some trim.
Feels awesome to have done these 3 doors today though, I've been so busy lately I haven't really had time for something like this.