I made a tremendous amount of headway on the home gym floor this weekend, and I got the FLOR carpet tiles installed in the whole room with the exception of the closet area. And I’m absolutely thrilled with how these look! I used the Rush Street FLOR carpet tiles in black, and I took a chance by ordering them without ordering samples first. But my gamble paid off, because I love how they look!
I still have to do something about that transition strip, but more on that in a second.
I will be adding quarter round or shoe molding (probably quarter round) to the baseboards to cover over areas like this where the tiles didn’t cover right up to the wall. Cutting carpet strips that tiny would be huge pain, but quarter round will cover right over that.
Back to the transition strip. I have two in this room — one coming from the hallway and one going into the bathroom. My initial thought was to match the stain on the one going into the hallway to match the hardwood floor in the hallway.
But then I have this other one going from the black FLOR carpet tiles to a white marbled tile bathroom floor.
So to keep things consistent, I’ve decided to stain both of them black to match the FLOR carpet tiles instead. And I’ve already tested Matt’s wheelchair over the transition strips, and it goes over them with ease.
I know I’ve only had these carpet tiles down for a couple of days, but I’m absolutely sold on FLOR carpet tiles. I absolutely love the way they look.
And installing them was just about as easy as a DIY project can get. I was going to take step-by-step pictures for a little tutorial, but there’s no need. Seriously. You put one tile down. You put sticky squares on the back edge. You put another tile down next to it stuck to the same sticky squares so that the two tiles are stuck together. Repeat. 😀 And if you’re installing wall-to-wall like I did, just use a utility knife with a new sharp razor blade and a straight edge to cut the tiles.
It seriously couldn’t get any easier, and the result is really phenomenal. And while it’s not exactly immediate gratification, you can get a whole room done in a day (as long as you’re not having to deal with subfloor issues, like I am).
I wanted a black floor since this is a home gym, but it’s definitely very black and very dark. It does make the room feel darker, but since the walls are so bright and cheerful, I don’t have a problem with the room feeling a little darker.
Cooper, our very hyper 100-pound dog, has already tested it out as well. I was jumping on my rebounder Saturday night, and I let him come in here with me. He started running and spinning and doing all kinds of sudden starts and stops. None of that had any effect at all on the carpet squares. They didn’t separate (those sticky squares really are super sticky). They didn’t move or shift. They didn’t snag. Other than a few dirty paw prints (he had been outside prior), they looked perfectly fine after he finished playing and left the room. And those dirty paw prints vacuumed right up.
So I’m a big FLOR fan now! They’re not exactly cheap. I bought 100 tiles for this room (I think I’ll have five left over, which I’ll be glad to have on hand in case I need to replace one), and with shipping and tax, it came to just over $1600.
So it’s not a cheap option, but I do think there’s truth in “you get what you pay for.” I tried to go the cheap route the first time, and spent only about $225 for foam tiles for the whole room. (When I bought them, they were cheaper than they are now.) And we all saw how that worked out. They didn’t look as good. The gym equipment left really bad dents in the foam, and they didn’t come out even days later. And Cooper poked a hole in the foam floor the first time he came in here.
But these carpet squares look great, fit together perfectly (no jigsaw puzzle-looking seams like with the foam floor), and they seem pretty indestructible. So while they’re considerably more expensive than the foam home gym floor tiles that I initially tried to use, I think the added expense will be worth it. And since they hold up to my big, hyper dog, I have no doubt that they’ll hold up perfectly to Matt’s wheelchair.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I hope you’ll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you’ll never miss a thing!
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