Thursday, September 2, 2010

The New and Improved "Gym Schur"

A few months ago we had a flood in our basement in what we called the “Basement Debacle” where close to six inches of water covered our entire basement floor. We had a lot of help from friends and family (thank you Britt, Lia, Sean, Alex, Rich & Greg!) with buckets, garbage cans, etc. to remove the water and then a company came in throughout the following week with dehumidifiers, fans and sanitizers to finish the job (hello electric bill!) After some further cleaning, we finally had the opportunity to freshen up the 160 square feet of finished space in our basement. We had previously used it as a place for my treadmill, an extra TV and mostly storage and since we have too much storage in the rest of our house, we decided to maximize the space and turn it into a home gym. We painted everything, had carpet installed and put up baseboards. We already had a treadmill, but also bought a Concept 2 rower, a pair of Powerblock weights (which are all-in-one dumbbells that range from 3-24 lbs), a medicine ball and a stability ball.


With the exception of the painting, we pretty much finished the room in one day. I arranged for the carpet to be installed on Tuesday, so Steve took the day off and I left work at 1 pm. My wonderful stepfather also came over to perform his electrician duties. Rich and his senior apprentice (a.k.a. Steve) added an outlet for the TV and also replaced all of the existing outlets with new pretty white ones. They also did some other electrical things that I can't really explain, other than they make my life easier and me happier (their words, not mine). I proceeded to install the baseboards, DirecTV came and installed our HD DVR box and then Steve and I set up the remainder of the room. Pretty long but super productive day!




We also bought a 42” plasma and surround sound that we got a great deal on at Costco. I guess you can say we have a little obsession with flat screen TV’s :)



Overall, it looks really nice and we’ve already utilized it twice in two days! I have maintained my membership at the YMCA simply because it's nice to get away from the office and it's only a block away from work. I also have a great weight room at work with a brand new Woodway Treadmill (the crème de la crème in treadmill country…seriously like running on clouds), so I guess I have a plethora of options and no excuses! We’ll see how it goes.

On a related note…I am back running and feeling good. I am on a pretty strict schedule that includes three days of running beginning with 2 miles and progressing weekly in ½ mile increments.

We leave Friday afternoon for a long weekend in Alexandria, Virginia and will report back when we return...That’s it for now!

Happy and Safe Travels!

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