words that inspire

I am amazed at how quickly things are coming along.  I spend my nights dreaming up the finishing touches for the gym.  Tonight, artwork is on my mind. 

I really like vintage or vintage styled fight posters like these:

I also like the message in these (although I'm not in love with the colors or fonts in all of them):

I love this one, but only because it's so very true:

The bones of the gym will be super clean and classic, but I think giant prints will spice up the place and can easily be changed out when the time is right. 

dirty work

The demolition has gone very smoothly. We've tried to salvage all the lumber from the walls we removed to help with the cost of rebuilding. This takes away from some of the fun of 'breaking' things, but it's better for the environment and our wallets. Using recycled or reclaimed materials is important to us and an important aspect of this new gym. It's almost time to start space planning...which to me (Carly), is going to be the most fun. I've said it before but we are so lucky to have such great students and friends to help us with this new endeavor.

this space WAS an office and will soon be half of the 1,000 sqft cage

locker area

cage area

steve and david standing in front of their pile

a small glimpse of the terrible sponge paint that once plagued this entire area

the wall dividing the future yoga studio

...and so the journey begins

We finally signed it!  The space is ours and we have a LOT of work to do.  Here's a few BEFORE pictures:

So much potential and did I mention that its almost directly on a highway! 

The view of our soon-to-be yoga studio. 

Right-half of the front room.

3,200 sqft basement the boys have already dubbed the "war" room.

Where our 1,200 sqft cage will be. 

Left side of the front room (the front room is a massive 3,200 sqft)!

out with the old

Among several other things, our new gym was once a dog training facility and a (very successful) bird store (who actually ended up being our new neighbors at our old gmy).  This is all great....except for the fact that the entire place was carpeted!  Dog training + wall-to-wall carpet = grossness. 

So the first order of business was to get all of the old flooring out! 

Here is Steve standing next to our carpet pile. 

Next on the list is to demo the old office space which, in my absence already happened.  I'll try to paint a picture for you; old wood paneling + periwinkle sponge paint + drop ceiling. It was bad, you should probably thank Steve and David for knocking it down before I could get proof of how terrible it was. 

I can almost taste it

We are so close, I can almost taste it. Today we are supposed to sign a lease for our new gym space. A space big enough to house our current students and allow for the growth of our gym into what we've been dreaming of for years.


I met Steve while working as a kickboxing and boot camp instructor for a boxing gym. I saw him around on the other side of the gym and always noticed the interaction between him and his students. I thought to myself that he must be a great coach and a nice guy to have such loyalty from these students(I was right). One night I overheard him talking to someone about building a website for way too much money...I always thought that he could do bigger things than rent the corner of a gym, and overhearing this let me know he wanted something more. I left him a note at the front desk telling him I could help him get a site together for almost nothing and to call me. He swears it was my way of slyly hitting on him. Not true...but I did think he was cute.

That's where it all started. We would meet before our classes at BreadCo and dream up our gym. The boxing gym we were at took on new owners and management and quickly closed down. That was it...our chance to take a stab at small business ownership and to open our own gym. We had two problems, we only had five days notice to find and occupy a new space and we had no plans or money.

We frantically looked for places and found a spot in Valley Park only 20 minutes from the old gym. The amazing support and loyalty that came from the students was amazing, we had guys and girls out all day and night to help pull the new space together so that we could open quickly. We seriously could not have done it without all of them.

We survived the last two years almost entirely by word of mouth so that we could save money and plan for a space that would allow us to continue to grow. Our old lease is coming to an end and a bigger space was not only desired but necessary for us.

I hate long blog posts so in the next one I'll talk about the new space and our plans for it and the amazing people that are going to be the parachutes that make this leap of faith possible.