I built this home climbing gym for myself in 2017, as a way to push back against the sedentary lifestyle of a web developer, and take advantage of unused space.
Since I had these super high dormer ceilings in my top floor apartment, and I found that the local climbing gym had a policy of retiring there used climbing wall holds, I decided to roll my own climbing gym.
It’s a fairly simple structure, 16 foot long 2 x 6 is sandwich between plywood. Installed a random array of insert nuts, glued into the plywood from the back, so the routes could be easily changed. The top-rope is anchored on a 4-foot piece of steel pipe, that also allowed me to hang gymnastic rings (so I could practice my iron-cross pose haha).
Total height was 16-feet, and fully vertical. I had plans to expand it, but I ended up building an upper floor next to it, and eventually used the structure to support a stairway. All was dismantled in 2019 before moving to Taos.
The whole thing was quite compact, and also offered a bit of room-division in my loft space, which really felt too spacious at that point in the room.
When I moved out, the whole thing went to a family with kids, who reported they loved it in their back yard.
