My Homemade Climbing Wall

After nearly 2 years out of rock climbing, I was in poor shape when I finally decided to get back into it. The obvious solution was to get somewhere to train so I wouldn't flail so badly out on the rocks. This page shows the wall under construction with some shots of us hard at work on it. We use some foam mattress pads from Walmart over queen sized air mattresses for padding. The air mattresses are partially filled so they don't burst when we crash.

Construction: Simply put, a home climbing wall is a "skin" of plywood screwed onto framing. The skin plywood has T-nuts in it for attaching artificial holds. You could make your own holds out of wood or just plain rocks and epoxy them to the wall but then you can't move them. The T-nuts allow you to set routes and then later take them down and reset them, changing position of holes.

The BEFORE shot. First, where to put the wall. We had a corner in the garage that needed some organization anyway, so I chose it.	Framing comes first. My garage is somewhat finished as the master bedroom is above the garage and this had to be done for insulation. The exposed studs are ideal as a starting point.	The vertical studs in my wall don't line up with the horizontal ones above, so I had to place a 2x4 horizontally which would allow me to place my angled frame pieces wherever I wanted them. I got one sized and shaped the way I wanted, then used it as a template to make the others.

This shot shows the left frame and skin already in place. I made it lower angled than the 2nd set which is shown partially framed here.	I added some horizontal pieces to make the frame beefy.	Tee nuts are the preferred method of attaching the holds. Every climbing hold I've ever seen has a 3/8" bolt, so a 3/8" Tee nut is needed.

After drilling a series of 7/16" holes in the wood, you place the tee nut in the hole and then pound it in. I drilled on an 8 inch staggered grid. Some people do 6 inch grid, but I decided to save a little money and time.	Here the oldest, Taylor, and I place a skin sheet on the 2nd angled section. You can see the framing I have placed on the roof.	Here I place screws into a roof section. The youngest, Sam is visible inside the wall behind me.

Sam loves to climb INSIDE the wall as well as on the outside.	My wife Megan sorting some of the holds that we have. It's good to have an assortment of sizes and shapes.	Sam places a hold using a hex wrench.