I don't crave exercise like my husband does and I have to keep switching things up to make sure I'm not too lazy. Dog walking gets me off my behind. I also use a fitness tracker that buzzes once an hour if I haven't moved.

My husband and kids always perk up when the endless pool type commercials come on tv. I didn't realize that the jets were so expensive.

Your tapestries are great!

I seem to do okay by just switching the music I listen to while using the machine. I have made folders with days of the week for music, so that nothing gets repeated. So far, I have only gotten to 25 minutes at one session, but I'm trying to get to 30. I always stop before I am exhausted, and so I know I could get longer, but I do get bored. That's why having the TV in front of me helps. I'll try to take a photo from the machine, so that you can see what the room looks like while I am on it. The view from the machine is pretty important to me. In Venice, I had my universal gym in the garage, and I had a view of my back yard with the garage door open, but of course the view from the beach bike path was infinitely better. I'm about three miles from the beach now, and so I don't want to ride my bike to the beach any more.

I sometimes miss my home elliptical. In my last house I had a designated exercise room, miss that as well. No room in my downsize house. I bought one of these a few weeks ago for $19 at Marshals, a week later I bought a $3 pair of leg or wrist weights I use with. I'm doing an hour and a half a day while reading or watching TV. I also do a half an hour of light weight lifting. Will probably add to this with two days at the gym in a month or so. I hate the gym but will need to up my game shortly...been lazy for a few months and let myself go to he!!. Can't wait for my pool to get warm enough (not heated), I love swimming for an hour on alternative days. I had previously worked hard on my fitness but now it's like starting over.

If you use leg weights... this little thing works not bad. I would not pay the regular price for it though. For nineteen bucks I'm ok with its minor annoyances.

Lars, can you put a folding g screen so that it blocks elliptical when front door opens? If not. I’d leave it as is.

I don't see a problem, Lars. That looks like the most appealing setting for exercise equipment I've ever seen.

The point of the exercise machine is to make YOU look good. Hiding the equipment is a no-no. Keeping it front and center makes the equipment hard to ignore and easier to make use of.

Haha Sue! Yes, but, it also reduces coronary heart disease risk factors : )

If you moved the sofa into the guest room, how do you entertain guests in the living area of the house? Or sit to watch tv when you're not exercising?

We have two lounge chairs in the living room in front of the TV, and we have two identical occasional chairs - one is in the photo and can be moved to the other side of the machine when we have guests. Anyway, we do almost all of our entertaining outdoors. It's 75° right now and will be in the 80s Sunday and Monday.

Ankle weights are a good idea - I have two sets and have not been using them, but I think I should start wearing them again when I go to work, which is only alternate weeks.

Here's the view from the machine:

Lars did you make that closet curtain cover? Looks nice!

That's not a closet - that is a window beside my door:

The fabric is batik from South Africa, and I made both curtains. The fabric on the left was not as long as the other, and so I had to add some black fabric at the top to make it the same length as the other curtain. As you can see, they do not match, but each panel is a unique piece. I found these at the Abbot Kinney Street Fair in Venice one year, from sellers who were from South Africa. I have a third one that is very different in color, and I use it sometimes as a tablecloth when I have parties.

That really looks nice. I love rooms with travel stories.

Lars, does the machine fold down at all? That would help. Otherwise, you could make an elephant slip cover for it. :O)

Your space has a lot personality (in a good way) and seems very authentic. Not staged or copied. In that sense, it seems perfectly ok to have something functional in it. It is what it is. Also, your health is much more important than a perfectly designed room.

I agree that function comes before form--and exercise is so important. I vote to leave your machine where it is. I never enjoyed gyms, and we have a lot of gym equipment in our garage. But the thing I've been able to stick to is a local park workout. It feels so good to exercise outside, and after looking and looking, I found a great instructor. Just a thought, to help with anyone who doesn't like public gyms.

I think it's fine and worth any aesthetic trade-off if you're using it regularly. I think the screen idea is worth investigating.

I have a great gym at work but am trying to add some home options. I've got a bunch of resistance bands and just got a kettlebell. They live in the living room, but I'd like to have a better set up in my guest room/office with a few more weights. Would love to see others pics of home gym/flex spaces.

I think that your room can handle it, since it's not uptight and reads a very authentic room. I usually dislike just about any thing that's purely functional(yep, vehicles, refregirators, electrical outlets lol, you name it)-but so what, they still make life easier.

I'm also thinking about the pool-but it seems it'd be 50K with the features I want(and we didn't touch basic hardscaping yet-still tired from remodel), and I don't want to spend much space of the backyard, want a smaller pool..and it seems also a buldozer that should get there to dig must have 5 feet clearance minimum to drive through-frankly I'm not sure we have these 5 feet. But it's a huge consideration to me since it's about only exercise I might be able to handle these days. And pools that come with the gyms, I'm hesitant to use already. I feel very unsafe in showers, etc. Also harder to get there. Minimizes one's chances of keeping to the routine

At this point of my life, I highly envy anyone that can exercise, you know. Where an elliptycal stands, with all my aesthetical preferences-that's really secondary.

I do like screens, theoretically-I've never had one. Everything I really like is really expensive (we looked into it-sometimes we have many guests and some have to sleep in the family room which has no door-so a screen would give them more sense of privacy)

In some other room, would go for a screen. Here-I don't know..it might be that screen wil end up being too big, more obtrusive than helpful.

In short I'd put up with it too..if drives me crazy with time, then I'd think whether to change anything.

But I support your priorities more than I can ever express.

I like the idea of painting the metal part in some tribal pattern, to make the machine blend in more, but I'm a bit afraid of calling more attention to it. I'll have to do a rendering to see how I would like it.

The bids we've gotten for a pool have been $65K and up, and that does not include the swim jets that I want, but it does include a motorized cover, which I think we need. It also does not include the rest of the hardscaping, which we can do a bit later, like in the next year. But if we wait a year, we can afford to do everything all at once.

Thanks for your support, April! I hope you get your pool also. We do have 5' of clearance to our back yard, but that is not enough for the large bulldozers.

The machine does not fold down, and in fact we bought it assembled, as the floor model was all the store had left in inventory, and we would have had to wait a month for delivery. This way we did not have to pay for assembly or assemble it ourselves, and the one we bought had only been on the floor for two days.

yes, exactly what I want too if already going through the trouble..didn't know a proper name for it..a motorized cover.

Trbal pattern might be cool. I liked justerrilynn's suggestions. Of course takes consideration, so renderings are a great idea.

I do have some scraps of zebra hides, and I could put a zebra mane on the front of the machine and have it detachable. I think that might help make it blend in. I made a hat out of one zebra mane. I got the scraps at work - remnants from clients' upholstery jobs. Manes and tails are not used in the upholstery, and so they are discarded, but I took them from the discard pile.