Toolbox Pilates Art Studio — Attraction in Washington

TLDR; beautiful venue (hence 1 star), but one of the most pretentious and unfriendly workout classes I have ever taken in my life (Chair 1 with Vivian)

THE TEA: This is only the 9th Google review I’ve ever written, that’s how salty I am about my experience here. I’ve been wanting to try pilates at Toolbox for a while and finally signed up for the Chair 1 class after enrolling in a trial subscription of ClassPass. Never did pilates before, there were no mat classes available that worked with my schedule, and I figured a beginner chair class would be fine because hello it’s marketed as a BEGINNER CLASS. The venue is hidden in an alley and I got lost trying to find it and showed up 2 minutes late. It’s a small intimate class of only 5 students, so the instructor knows I’m new. She literally GLARES at me after I apologize for being late and impatiently waves me over to my pilates chair. When she finds out I’m a total beginner, she has no qualms making it clear to everyone her skepticism that I could even get through the class. I literally had to reassure her that I would try my best. She then tells me “well, everyone else here knows what they’re doing so I’m not going to slow down the class too much for you okay.” Wow - so warm, so welcoming!

The class begins, and her teaching method is very much like that of a drill sergeant, which I actually don’t mind because she’s strict and doesn’t let you get away with bad technique. However, there was this pretty obvious dynamic where she shows clear favor to the students who have been there longer and are obviously more advanced and skilled, whereas with the newer students (me) or those less advanced (others) she adopted a “prove yourself to me” attitude with barely any encouragement. Not gonna lie, it was effective: I was so turned off by her energy that I was laser focused on doing the exercises instead of enjoying myself. And hey, a lot of it was hard, but for what it’s worth, I got through the class just fine, and I’m sure many others who consider themselves at moderate fitness levels would also have been perfectly fine.

At the end of the class, she comes up to me and kept asking me if I did yoga or was a dancer (as if that should matter?) and then flat out told me “I didn’t think you’d hold up too well today because you’re such a beginner, but good job.” I muttered a thank you and immediately left. It’s funny because there was another student in the class who kept on raving about how she and her friend loooove this instructor’s Chair 1 class sooo much - which clearly shows people have had different experiences here. That’s fine, good for them, me writing this bad review is for my own emotional catharsis more than anything. But in general I’m not interested in taking fitness classes, or venturing into the world of pilates, in an environment where instructors 1) seem to have no grace or understanding for the myriad reasons a student might be late to class, 2) play favoritism, 3) put you down from the start, 4) and then only begrudgingly bestow upon you their approval when you don’t fail.

Unreal. I walked out of there in disbelief. I am never ever coming back here for a class, and will never recommend this place to anyone who asks. Ok tea spilled,...

We were interested in Toolbox as a wedding venue but unfortunately the unresponsiveness from the owner forced us to look elsewhere. I rarely post negative reviews but am really disappointed that we wasted valuable time in our venue search.

I toured the venue by myself at first because it is near my office, and we live far outside DC. The owner was 20 minutes late and I'm fairly convinced forgot about our appointment until I was able to flag a pilates instructor down and explain I had a tour scheduled (the instructor made a call and the owner arrived 10 minutes later, clearly frazzled). The tour was a bit chaotic and all over the place, but I really liked the space. I scheduled a time to return with my fiancé a couple of weeks later and thought we were all set.

The day of the scheduled tour I reached out by both text and email to confirm, but didn't receive a response. We arrived at the venue and the owner was nowhere to be found, so I called, texted, and emailed again. He was a complete no-show. We waited for more than 30 minutes, and ended up just quickly walking through the space and unintentionally interrupting a pilates class. I figured we may hear from him and he'd apologize/explain the situation - but he literally never responded or reached out. We really liked the space but obviously could not move forward given the unprofessionalism and lack of respect for our time. The venue costs $7.5k - that's not cheap, even by DC standards. We were not comfortable spending that kind of money and planning our wedding (something that is inherently very stressful) at a place that was already so disorganized and leaving a terrible impression.

It's a beautiful location and the photos I've seen from weddings there look stunning, but unfortunately our experience prevented us from...

I decided to look at Toolbox because it had the brick backdrop, I wanted. When I actually went to see it though it was even better than I expected. It mixes old (brick) with new, modern art and has the added softness of all the string lights. I saw it in the daytime, and I knew it was exactly what I wanted. My fiance was hesitant only because we'd only toured 2 venues by that point, but I knew I didn't have to look any further.

The day of the wedding, it looked amazing, and we didn't have to add much decor to make it look that way since the venue it beautiful by itself. We got so many compliments about our wedding from guests, but the biggest one was about how amazing the venue was.

Tip: If you go with Toolbox are considering getting a day-of-coordinator, use Toolbox's coordinator, Iva. She only charges $600 which is much less than a typical day of coordinator. She knows the venue so well, and it made the...