I Turned My Cobwebby Basement into a Home Gymâand Indoor Garden
This story is a part of New Year, New You, a package devoted to small, low-stress home improvement projects that, with a little effort, will dramatically improve your life.
My partner and I have been living in our house for nearly four years, and weâre still finding ways to improve it. Last year, for example, we turned our junk room into a breakfast nook. This summer, we covered our backyard in grow bags and produced enough peppers and tomatoes to stock a chest freezer. Over the holidays, my partner electrified the garage and installed a hoist that allowed us to transfer items into the sloped-roof attic without having to carry them one-handed up a rickety ladder.
This newly accessible storage space allowed us to begin tackling another task that had been on our to-do list since at least 2022: Cleaning out the basement, so we could turn it into an indoor garden and an in-home gym.
Technically, our house has two basements. Thereâs the original, brick-walled root cellar, which was undoubtedly built in the 1930s as a necessary component of the six-room cottage. As the house expanded, taking on wings and branching into back patios, the basement expanded as well. Right now weâve got a cement-floored space thatâs roughly the size of a one-bedroom apartment, if you count the root cellar as a bedroomâwhich is why we were so excited about transforming it into something more useful than a spiderwebby storage unit.
If youâre thinking about turning your basement into a more functional, multi-use spaceâwhether or not you go the full gym/garden routeâhere is some of what we learned as we started using ours more effectively.
Get the minimum required equipment set up as soon as possible
You donât need me to explain the benefits of stashing exercise equipment in a basement, once you can figure out how to safely maneuver the pieces down the stairs. In our case, we invited two friends to help. One of our friends brought over a set of forearm lifting straps, which we liked so much that we got our own set (they came with the hoist).
Weâd been talking about moving that treadmill from the garage to the basement for nearly four years. Weâd also been talking about cleaning out the basement. Eventually, we decided that weâd clean just enough basement to get the treadmill down thereâwhich was probably the smartest way to start this entire process.
If weâd told ourselves that we had to complete the basement clean-out before we could install the treadmill, we would have procrastinated on both tasks forever. Now, every time we turn on our treadmillâwhich is pretty much every day, now that the weather has gotten so miserable that even I wonât go out in itâwe see the possibilities of turning this space into a fully-functional home gym. We also see the rest of the junk in the basementâwhich makes us even more motivated to get rid of it.
Use what you have before researching what you need
Unbelievably, our outdoor garden was still producing grow-bag lettuces through the end of December. As delightful as it was to pick fresh arugula out of the backyard on Christmas morning, both my partner and I are aware that the long-term effects of climate change are more likely to be negative than positive. Thatâs why weâve been looking for ways to create an indoor garden that could both rival and supplement our outdoor one.
Eventually, weâre going to want to do hydroponicsâin the root cellar, naturallyâbut for now, weâre building our garden out of stuff we already have. We had an empty pot, so we put a basil plant in it. Then we attached a grow light to the rim. Then we cleaned out a second pot and put a rosemary plant in it. We started two huge batches of peppers in two more pots, and thenâwith no more empty pots on handâwe planted arugula in a 28-quart Sterilite storage bin. It just sprouted, and weâre hoping to plant spinach soon.
We also didnât let our desire to set up an Olympic-class powerlifting station prevent me from working out with a set of PowerBlock dumbbells I bought in 2018. Yes, I know that barbells are better for coordinated symmetrical movements, and we actually have a weight bench and barbells we can use once we clear out the next section of the basementâbut for now, we have dumbbells. That means I can lift weights today without waiting for tomorrow.
You may not have an extra pot sitting around, much less a plant to put into it. Donât let that send you into a year-long research project for the best indoor gardening tools. Go to your local plant storeâgo to Amazon, if you have toâand get yourself the minimum amount of stuff required to get started.
Then grow, grow, growâwhether itâs muscles, basil or endurance. Youâll know when itâs time to make your next purchase.
Give yourself something to work towards
My partner and I spent part of last night talking about what the basement could become, when we finally finished working on it. What we needed to throw away, and what we needed to take up the hoist into the attic above the garageâand then, what we might put on the walls and the floors and the shelves. An old green rug that doesnât fit anywhere else in the house, probably. The prints from last yearâs calendar, sticky-tacked above the shelves like a wallpaper border. The books Iâve written and the piano music heâs played, stacked neatly below. A work table, with one of those tool walls where thereâs a hand-drawn outline for every tool.
"Wow," I said, after we had come up with all the ways in which the space could be transformed. "Iâm going to start hauling stuff out of the basement tomorrow."
And I willâbecause I want to see that art and those tools on our walls. I also want to set up that weight bench and get the barbells installed, and thereâs this lamp we havenât been able to use that might fit perfectly next to the rug, and we could put colorful labels on the shelves and the plant pots, and none of this can happen until we clean out the other half of the basement. So weâll get it done. Then weâll start thinking about hydroponics.
Top image via Getty Images
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