Plan To Convert A 250-Year-Old Carriage House Into A Gym

Let me share our plan to convert a 250-year-old Carriage House into a gym…a plan we came up with AFTER the hammers came out and the dust started flying.

When most people are spontaneous, they go out for ice cream.

When we are spontaneous, we embark on back-breaking work to repoint the stone walls of a Carriage House.

I think we’re doing spontaneity wrong.

Here’s the current exterior of our Carriage House. You can be horrified by the before pictures of the roof here and marvel at how paint transformed this building here.

Having a space to exercise at home, specifically to lift weights, was something we’d been contemplating for a year. It stemmed from me periodically asking Handy Husband if we should get weighted vests to wear during our walks. His reply always was, “We have backpacks. I could put a few rocks in one for you to wear.”

Not what I was envisioning but I am thrifty enough to consider it.

We eventually found a weight set that had enough safety features built into it that made us feel comfortable moving ahead with the idea of a home gym.

We were going to just plop the weights in the bottom of our Carriage House and call it good.

Then one of my kids said, “It’s kind of gross in there, Mom.”

They weren’t wrong.

In fact, that was a surprisingly understated statement for a sarcastic teenager.

It was dirty. The windows were cracked. Moss, actual moss, was growing on the floor. The stone walls were crumbling. Crumbling into dust you probably don’t want to breathe while getting healthy.

It wasn’t a place that screamed “Let’s build muscle mass so we minimize sarcopenia as we age!”

It occurred to me that we should probably fix the walls before we decide to open the eleven billion boxes the weight set came in.

Do you know how heavy boxes are that contain actual weights?

Atlas holding up the world heavy.

Once we set that weight bench up, that’s it. We’re done.

Five minutes later, I have a hammer, safety glasses, and a face mask, and I’m chipping the crumbling mortar off the stone walls of the Carriage House.

I did inform Handy Husband of the decision on my march to the garage to get the hammer but that was about all the thought that went into the idea.

Dear Reader, once you start chipping mortar off a stone wall, you can’t walk away from that carnage. You’ve made a literal mess. There is rubble at your feet and you’re going to spend the next month reminding yourself why we don’t do spontaneity unless it involves ice cream.

So, here’s the plan to convert a 250-year-old Carriage House into a gym.

First, we cry a little. Then we dry our tears and chip all the mortar off the stone walls. Dispose of the old mortar. Mix new lime mortar and repoint all the stones. There are so many stones. Question our life choices. Replace rotting wood around the windows. Move a water line. Run electrical through conduit because we’ve decided to go for an industrial look over a janky look. Start to see light at the end of the tunnel. Whoops, realize that was just a crack in the window pane. Fix the cracked window pane. Strip paint off existing old wood we are saving. Paint windows. Clean floor. Clean everything. Add trim around the ceiling.

I think that’s about it.

After all of that, we can open those eleven billion boxes and set up the new weight set.

Sounds like fun, right?

The irony of how much physical work this plan involves for us to be able to do physical workouts is not lost on me.

It’s kind of humorous if you think about it.

Five years ago, we did not have the confidence or knowledge to tackle this project. We’ve learned a lot working on this old house of ours, so while we did embark on this project spontaneously, we did understand what we’d be getting into. It wasn’t our first foray into repointing stone walls.

And we don’t regret doing it. We’re still in the thick of it, so I wish it was going faster and I wish the building had air conditioning because summer in New Jersey is no joke. But we do have jobs, kids, and other responsibilities to manage at the same.

It will get done. It will be worth it.

Did I repeat myself? Yes. That’s not because I’m losing it. (Might have already lost it.) That’s because my subconscious thoughts are bleeding into this blog post and that’s the refrain I have on repeat in my brain.

Have you ever been spontaneous? Did it involve DIY or something more fun? How do you feel about weights and resistance training? Tell me everything. Please leave a comment on this blog post, email us here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.

Happy DIY!

P.S. I hope you do something fun and spontaneous today. Not my kind of spontaneous though.

Thanks for being here today. This is a fun respite for me from repointing stone walls. Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy.

Carriage House Studio Apartment Reveal

Tongue and Groove Ceiling For The Carriage House (the room we are currently working on)

Black Metal Roof for our Carriage House