Who shares the room with you?
This is an important question when home designing or updating a space. Who spends time there and what do they do there? What are their function, flow and style needs? As you may know, I’m participating in the One Room Challenge. I’m calling my room “the energy escape”. My goal is to help anyone transform a drab space into “a go to workout room” that exudes great power and energy, and they love to spend time in.
If you are not familiar with The One Room Challenge read last week’s post. See Before shots too.
I’ve got three special beings that use my home workout room.
There is Lincoln, my dog who we also call the Velcro pet, because he follows me everywhere, including when I go to work out. Then there is my husband, who definitely has a more function, over fashion views on any room design. And me, who wants the room to look amazing, and be a magnet, so I use it daily.
Pets have special needs, when we are talking work out room design.
Pet considerations
- Make sure there is nothing reachable that they may confuse with a snack.
- Secure equipment so there is no danger of things falling after some playing catch.
- Easy access to the outdoors for those special times.
Husbands have special needs too. My husband who is very supportive of my design work, has some strong opinions of projects that happen in our house. He is a bit more practical and less aesthetically-focused. So here I have to dig deep for my diplomacy skills. I carefully present my ideas to sound like they were his and I listened to his function first side.
Husband considerations
- Make sure there was a TV present with good sound.
- Adequate places for his clutter that used to be stored in this room
- Easy access to drinking water, towels and a drying area for our swimsuits (we have an outdoor spa).
- No (armature or lame) pieces of athletic equipment.
This week I made excellent progress. My major achievement was to get all clutter and crap out of there that is not staying in the new design. Plus, next week we will be painting and we needed room to work.
My One Room Challenge progress this week:
1) Deciding on the room paint color
I selected Sherwin-Williams #7004 Snowbound. This white is one of my favorites. “It has a very clean undertone—no green, blue, or pink hues.”
Why: White is a timeless color that can give any room a bright and clean look. White walls will reflect more light making any small space feel bigger and brighter. White walls will also make darker workout equipment stand out even more. White will reflect the outdoors.
Selecting the lighting fixtures
My room already had 4 recessed ceiling cans with standard light bulbs. These functioned OK but, updating them to an LED light would add a nice detail with a rotating eye, be more energy efficient and last up to 25 time longer. I also decided to add to decorative sconces to a frame my art piece of art and add some style. My go to for all my lighting needs is Progress Lighting.
Sourcing my green wall design elements
I love green walls. Bringing in a mother nature with permanent botanicals is part of my vision for this room. (The uninformed call these fake plants, LOL). I’m sourcing these biophilic treasures from Gold Leaf Design Group, a specialty resource in Chicago. I’m still working though my final design based on product availability and how it feels in the space.
On the entry wall to the right, I’m thinking 3 simple tall, black framed mirrors to reflect the foliage outside and to provide a conscious when I’m are working out. Hopefully soon I will feel the “dam I look good!” and not, “dam, I look these Spanx make me look big!”.
I’ve got 6 more weeks of excitement. Here is what you can look forward to.
Week 3 – April 19th – Next phase of rendering, sourcing the wood wall and procuring product and interviewing subs.
Week 4 – April 26th – Start transformation.
Week 5 – May 3rd -More work.
Week 6 – May 10th – More work.
Week 7 – May 17th – Final touches, “after” photos.
Week 8 – May 24th – 28th -The big reveal, B&A shots, lessons learned.
Till next week, make it an outstanding adventure!
