Working On My Fitness (Room)

First let me apologize for being MIA for a while.  Sometimes I feel like a candle burning at both ends and I just can't quite keep up.  I do want to show you one of my many projects I have going on right now and that is my workout room in my basement.  This spring was my first one in my new house and we had some very rainy days this year.  Like a lot of people I discovered my basement leaked when it would rain a lot and it would seep in towards the bottom of the floor.  Having had this issue in every house I've ever owned I knew a cheap and fast remedy to keep the water out and my floor dry and that is to waterproof.  So I purchased Drylock and painted my little rear off and then topped it off with some heavy duty gray Dutchboy concrete paint.  This gives it all a nice, even, finished look and helps seal it off even more from the water.

The photo above shows the northeast corner of my basement aka my future workout room.



And this is another photo of the same area with the camera facing northwest.  On the other side of the fireplace (the brick structure in the photo) is my laundry room.  I felt like the fireplace would be a nice room divider to make this section of my basement the ideal spot for my workout room because it's more "enclosed" than any other part of my basement that's not already currently being used.

After I waterproofed and painted the walls it was time to put down the flooring.  I chose to use Easy Tile that I purchased from Menards.  It is perfect for basements, garages, utility rooms, around pools, etc. because it is made of a super sturdy plastic about 1/4" tall with holes in it that allow for drainage should my basement ever leak in the future.  The walls have been waterproofed and painted for a couple of months now and so far so good, however this is my extra security to protect my workout equipment.

While I was in Menards selecting my flooring I realized I did not measure the area that I wanted covered so I had no idea how many square feet I needed.  Each package covers ten square feet so I bought ten.  That should do it....or so I thought.  Here's how much of my flooring was covered by the time I was done opening and installing all ten packages.

Um yeah, not even close.  So after another trip to Menards and a whole cart filled with these bad boys I had a lot more work to do before I could call this project done.  And do you guys like my turquoise ring on my floor?  That was from me spray painting my kitchen table on the floor over the winter (don't worry I turned my furnace off first).  I knew I would cover the overspray up some way whether I eventually ended up painting the entire basement floor or whatever I ultimately decided to do, so I wasn't too worried about it and just took the easy lazy route. 

But basically this flooring is super easy for me to do all by myself.  It just locks into place within itself and then I took a hammer and very gently tapped the tiles into one another to lock them down.  The package requests for you to use a rubber mallet but I didn't have one so I just used an ordinary hammer and it did fine.  I know, I know, I'm out of control.  

Here's a shot with the camera facing east so you can see how the flooring works.  So far I have all my flooring laid but I need to buy one more package to finish off the gap between the edge of the flooring and the fireplace.  That means I'm going to have to trim them all down which should be F-U-N.  The good part is these are very easy to trim with utility scissors as I already had to cut one of the "squares" out around one of the floor jacks.  I also need to put the edge pieces on as well.  They are sold separately and are tapered so you don't trip as you step up onto the flooring if your entire floor is not made of Easy Tile.  I will keep you all updated on my progress as always and post some pictures when the floor is completely in and my treadmill and elliptical are in place!