This my single-room setup:
* A treadmill in the corner, cheap, but it gets the job done, as long as I don't go over 19 stone. When clicked up, there is barely room behind it for deadlifts, upright rows and other floor exercises.
* A loadable single-pulley functional trainer rack, from a manufacturer that no longer exists. The dimensions are off-standard, like 5x7cm, instead of more conventional 2 or 3 inches, which makes it very difficult to buy attachments for. I've bolted the rack into the wall using two-by-fours, which also allowed for cheap IKEA shelves.
* An adjustable bench w. attachments for sit-ups, leg curls and preacher curls.
* An 18kg 32mm Olympic barbell, which randomly matched perfectly to just go around the functional trainer, so I'm always sure the bar is dead centre in the rack.
* An 7kg Olympic EZ bar, and 2x4kg loadable dumbbells.
* 197.5kg in Olympic grib plates. 2x25kg, 2x20kg, 2x15kg, 4x10kg, 4x5kg, 4x2,5kg, 4x1,25kg, 4x0,625kg. All my training is done using these plates. It goes by a halfing system 10—>5—>2.5—>1.25, which makes progressive overload so much easier.
* Plus more and more attachments including 4x snap collars, and a DIY wooden box for loading the dumbbell sticks at waist height when placed on a stool. There's also an old punching bag in the corner, which I've converted to a Roman chair solution, putting it on top of the bench for more height, pinning my ancles under the left safety bar while lying across the punching bag.
There's for like £300 in total in there, though mainly 2010s prices. And it took me some 15 years to get this far, making a lot of mistakes along the way. There are more and more DIY solutions now, for instance I've carved some simple wooden blocks to both have a low-set barbell act as a leg roller for vertical pulldown, and to convert the rack to a Smith machine for mainly standing calf raises. I'm very proud of my 4x DIY 625g micro plates (no manufacturer makes that size, but I wanted to keep the halfing system going for especially dumbbell exercises), they're made from one 10m roll of steel strip bands and electrical tape. Those were very difficult to get as circular as possible and as compact as possible (rolling each one up like a watch spring), but all four was done for some £15 and a few tools I already had. I'm also proud of my DIY V-shaped cable extension made mainly from hardware store items and three pulley wheels off Amazon. That extension was about £80 in total, and each part is +120kg secure, which is all I need.
I would like to get a pegboard solution some day to better organize the various attachments on the wall, instead of keep drilling in more and more screws into this old bedroom.
I'm sure it can be done both cheaper and better and more elegant, but maybe this can inspire you.
