Project Flooring Upgrade

Project by Kaizen DIY

Hey everyone, welcome back to another tutorial. This is not a DIY gym equipment video. However, in this one, I’ll be replacing my flooring.

If you’re familiar with my gym, you’ll know that my flooring was in serious need of an upgrade. 

I moved into my current house and started assembling my home gym towards the end of 2019 but, like everyone else, building out my gym really kicked into gear in 2020. I slowly upgraded and expanded my gym through buying and selling in the used market. Through that process, I acquired a lot of free flooring, which was awesome because the flooring can be expensive. 

The problem is that this free flooring was a mix of all sorts of stuff. I had a deadlift platform in the center, a stall mat under my rack, puzzle foam on one side of the rack, different puzzle foam on the other side of the rack, and a few 1/2″ stall mats scattered in different areas. In other words, it was a total mess.

I have wanted to change it up and put in consistent flooring for a while, but with a potential move on the horizon, I planned to wait until after I moved and do stall mats throughout.  

That is, until a few weeks ago when I saw some commercial flooring pop up on Facebook Marketplace only 10 minutes from my house.

This dude bought a building that was previously used as a commercial gym. He had all this flooring rolled up and just wanted to get rid of it. I was pretty quick to message and offered to buy a few rolls. 

If you’re not already aware, this flooring is extremely heavy, even at just 3/8″ thick. I brought my neighbor with me to pick up. He’s a big dude, but even with his help, we couldn’t lift the rolls into my truck. We ended up unrolling, cutting the rolls in half, and then re-rolling.

We took them home, unloaded them into my garage, and called it a day. The following day I start prepping the gym. I have a basement gym, and it is pretty full, so the idea of moving everything out of the gym to lay down the floor is out of the question. I have to shuffle stuff around. 

I start with the bumper plates, the specialty bars, and everything else against the far wall. Next is my power rack.

This process would have been a lot easier with Super Sliders. I happened to see a reel from Basement Brandon using these, but it was basically after I was done. However, I still bought some, and I still recommend using them.

After that, I remove my dumbbells. These are all going into a big messy pile off camera.

Once I have the first four feet clear, it’s time to put down my first roll of flooring. I wasn’t exactly sure how much I bought when I bought this stuff. Once I start unrolling and cutting into size, it’s clear that I got more than enough.

My gym area is 19ft wide. I cut these rolls into 19ft pieces, roll them back up, and wrap them so I can carry them downstairs.

Gotta make sure the floor is clean before putting these down.

When I lay it down and unroll it, I try to get it as close to the wall as I can. I’m not super stressed about it being perfect because I’ll be moving soon.

I move everything over to the wall in preparation for the second roll.

I also start putting some stuff back.

I move the rack and then start disassembling the deadlift platform. 

Once that is out of the way, the second roll goes down easily. I prop up the rack with a small piece of stall mat to get under it. 

These rolls don’t all fit flush against the wall. I’m okay with that because the dumbbell rack covers it up.

I’ll need to get my functional trainer out of the way for the rest. Again, this process would have been 100% easier with the Super Sliders. I sort of scoot it and walk it slowly out of the way. It’s a little sketchy, but I make it work.

The leg curl/leg extension machine is the last thing to be moved.

I have some scraps I cut down to fill in the last few gaps. Cutting the flooring length-wise in straight lines is difficult, but again I’m not stressed about this being perfect. 

Once that is down, I scoot the functional trainer back into place.

I cut another small piece to go into the other corner and fill in a few other small gaps.

What’s nice about this new flooring is that I can angle the leg curl/extension machine and the functional trainer diagonally, which flows much better and makes the space feel bigger.

On these last few end pieces, I add gaffer tape to the seams to help cover gaps and tape where the mats transition to the floor.

This flooring is a considerable improvement. I wish I had done this years ago! 

Just for reference, my gym is just under 300 sq ft. If I had bought this new flooring, it would have been around $750. Covering it install mats would have been around $600.