The original plan was to turn the whole garage into a gym. What we have now is half a garage, and it’s by far the more realistic version.
It has a weights bench, a dumbbell rack, an exercise bike and two yoga mats on the floor. It’s also missing proper flooring, a boxed-in boiler, decent lighting and a coat of paint, so the aesthetics are a long way off where I want them.
But the PureGym app is deleted, and the space does gets used most days.
This post is an update on the garage gym conversion we started in April. If you’re after small garage gym ideas, here’s what we put in first, what we’d do differently, and what’s still on the list.
Why we stopped at half a garage
Converting the full garage means somewhere else has to hold everything that currently lives in it. That means sheds down the side of the house, and sheds are a project of their own with their own cost.
So the gym took the back half, near the internal door. The front half (that opens to the driveway) still has the shelving, the tools, the lawnmower and a stepladder, and you can see all of it in the photos. I didn’t tidy it for the camera, oops.
It might become the full garage eventually. For now a half garage is cheaper, quicker, and much easier for you to copy if you only have a single garage to work with. A gym doesn’t need much floor space. A bench, a rack and a bike fit comfortably in half of a single garage with room to move.
What’s in our garage gym
Here’s the full list so you can see what a small setup looks like in practice.
Adjustable weights bench. Ours is from MiraFit. It adjusts to different angles, so one bench covers pressing, rows and seated exercises. If you only buy one big piece of kit, make it the bench.
Dumbbell rack with hex dumbbells. Also MiraFit, a two-tier rack holding pairs at 5kg, 10kg, 15kg, 20kg and 25kg. That range covers most of what we do without needing plates, a bar or a full power rack. My little pale pink 1.5kg dumbbells sit on the bottom shelf and get used more than you’d expect.
The rack also keeps everything off the floor. Loose dumbbells in a small garage get in the way fast.
Exercise bike. It’s a Roger Black upright bike, which my Gran got from one of her friends. It has a super basic console and nothing about it is fancy.
Yoga mats, blocks and gloves. Two mats (pink and teal), a pair of yoga blocks and some weightlifting gloves. The mats are currently doubling as floor padding, which they’re not built for. More on that below.
Small garage gym ideas worth copying
A few things worked well, and a couple I’d change.
- Start with the equipment, not the decor. We bought the bench and rack before touching the walls, floor or lights. We could use the space straight away, which kept us going.
- Pick a rack over loose weights. It tidies the floor and makes the room look intentional even when everything else is unfinished.
- Use the cardio machine you already have. Moving the bike into the garage cost nothing.
- Keep shoes by the door. More on that in a moment.
- Do the floor first. I didn’t, and I’d tell you not to repeat that.
How the layout works in half a garage
The bike sits near the garage shelves, the bench in one corner and the rack is on the other side, and the mats sit in the middle, and are stored over the handle bars of the bike (glamorous i know). That leaves a clear walkway from the door to the back of the gym.
Keeping that walkway clear matters more than fitting in another machine. A small garage gym gets frustrating quickly if you have to move a bench every time you want to use the bike. Before you buy anything, mark out where each piece will sit with masking tape on the floor, and leave room to walk round the bench with a dumbbell in each hand.
Ceiling height is worth checking too. Our garage is a standard single garage, so overhead pressing is fine with dumbbells, but anything that needs a full rack and a bar would be a tighter fit. Dumbbells and an adjustable bench were the easiest option for the space we have.
How we actually use it
My partner uses the gym almost every day, usually after his run. He comes in, does a weights session on the bench with the dumbbells, and he’s back in the house in no time. Having it attached to the house makes a big difference. There’s no bag to pack and no drive, so there’s nothing in the way of actually doing it.
The bike mostly stays in the garage. Now and then it gets wheeled into the living room so it can sit in front of the TV, which makes a longer ride a lot more bearable. It’s an upright bike with a fairly small footprint, so moving it between rooms isn’t a big job.
That flexibility is one of the better arguments for a home gym over a membership. The kit is there at the end of a run, on a wet evening, or when you’ve got twenty minutes spare.
The shoes
We both have 3D printed shoes from Pollyfab. They were gifted to me. He has black and I have white.
They’re printed as a single piece, with an open lattice pattern on the white pair and a chunkier structure on the black. There are no laces to deal with. You step in and you’re ready to start, which is useful when you’re going between the house and the garage.
My partner wears them in the gym every day. They live by the garage door, under the weights bench, so they’re always where you need them. They’ve turned out to be very handy, and they’re a good fit for a garage gym because you can step in and out of them in a few seconds.
What the space still needs
Gym flooring
This is the priority. Right now the floor is bare painted concrete with two yoga mats laid over the top for padding. Yoga mats are fine for stretching and nothing else.
What I’m looking for in garage gym flooring:
- Protection for the concrete if a dumbbell gets dropped
- Noise reduction, as the garage is attached to the house
- Some grip underfoot
- Enough coverage for the bench, rack and bike
- A finish that looks good, because it’s the biggest surface in the room
Interlocking tiles and rolled rubber are the two options I’m weighing up. I haven’t picked one yet.
The boiler
The boiler sits in the corner along with the fuse box and the gas pipes, all uncovered. It needs boxing in and painting. That’s a job for a professional, because it involves gas.
Boxed in and painted to match the walls, that corner would stop dominating the room.
The lighting
The lighting is awful. It’s flat and harsh, and it makes the space feel like a storeroom rather than a gym. In the first post I planned for three ceiling lights in place of strip lighting, and that’s still the plan.
Lighting has to go in before painting, so I’m not painting under lights that are about to be replaced.
Paint and finishes
The walls and ceiling are plain white at the moment. The longer-term plan includes a black ceiling, wooden wall panels and a mirrored wall, but that’s a long way down the list. Paint comes after the boiler and the lighting.
The order I’m doing it in
- Flooring
- Boxing in the boiler
- Lighting
- Painting
- Mirror and wall panels
What’s next
The next post in the series will hopefully cover the flooring. You can follow the whole thing in the home gym section.
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