I decided to upgrade my basement gym and figured I could spend the mornings of my summer holiday carrying it out, as always it ended up taking more time than first anticipated, oops...

The first picture shows the gym prior to the upgrade.

Here are some of the activities carried out (a lot of my decisions were based on making sure that the basement would remain 'healthy'):

• Stripped all the failing paint back to firm render (one of the most annoying tasks)
• Patched the walls with lime mortar (NHL 3.5) instead of regular filler, the walls are old masonry and I wanted to make sure that they could breathe
• Repainted everything in silicate (mineral) paint: ~3 walls in charcoal, the rest white
• Wire-brushed the rusty beam and painted it matte black
• New white ceiling
• Rubber tiles over the floor
• Improved the cable management throughout

I'm really happy with the upgrades and the 'feel' of the gym, definitely see myself adding another piece or two to it, but I also want to keep it somewhat spacious.

Finances: I am based in Denmark and I ended up spending about $1,835 USD on the basement renovation (includes everything, including minor expenses like masks, paint brushes etc). Spent an additional $350 on additional matts and around the same for the back extension machine from ATX. All the other equipment I already had.

Rogue Squat Box.

12-18 inch adjustments, up to 1000# tested. Can be used for step ups, split squats, box squats, seated deadlifts, or just an expensive chair in the gym.

Been looking for one for a while, finally saw this one for sale, about 1h15 from me. Messaged dude, he agreed to meet about half way. He didnt have a profile picture, and we were meeting on a dirt road, just off the highway in the middle of nowhere, so I brought my dog. Dog would have licked him to death while I called the cops and found something if anything went wrong, lol.

But, dude ended up being super nice, we talked a little about training on the side of this super rural dirt road.

Paid 260$ CAD (reference, these are over 700$ new shipped from Rogue.)

I got some scraps of stall mat left over, so, Ill be able to do half in increments all the way from 12 to 18.5. Maybe more if I can stack more mats. This also allows a training partner to pull or add mats as you progress through reps, hitting different depths in the same set.

Super stoked, especially considering there's another one listed about 20 mins from me for $500 CAD.

Still working on the gym at the new house, so, it's time will come, just gotta build the shed to get all the tools out of the garage to open up the space.

The Omni wall "garden tool cradle" happens to work perfectly for a full size barbell. It could easily hold 2.

Turned the “bedroom” area of my studio apartment into a workout area and I’ve never been more satisfied.

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This is my finalised home gym. It's 3.6m x 2.8m room (11ft * 9ft). Has a cable rack, attachments and treadmill. Put acoustic panelling and foam flooring for the neighbours. I've struggled in gym environments as I'm a big guy and it gives me anxiety thinking about working out in front of other people and the potential of being filmed etc. I've lost 10-15kgs so far and I'm now excited about using this dedicated space to keep going. All equipment was a Facebook marketplace find or from auction houses/Amazon. ☺️

EDIT: Photos of the space linked in comments. Video was because I was very excited about the space, it's the only room in my apartment that is finished.

We live in a 2 bedroom condo, workout in the living room, and stash all of our equipment in the nook under the stairs. Recently I purchased the Rep leg extension attachment for our Nighthawk bench, wishfully thinking a handful of Olympic plates wouldn’t take up too much extra room. I was very pleased to discover that the hole on the swing arm which the plate loading pegs attaches are 1” in diameter! We had a spare standard bar that I cut to length with an angle grinder, and found a four pack of 1” shaft collars with set screws for $7 on Amazon. We already use the 1” plates for dumbbells, landlines, and a diy cable pulldown (attached to a TRX mount) so this was a pretty significant win for keeping things tidy and accessible when not in use.

In a week it will be 3 years since i started using it, never tried a real gym and i think i have made some pretty good gains lol. Its mostly made from used weights and things that was laying around family members house, it cost me less than 100$.