Game Room Online

From 2009 Game Room Painting

I meant to post this Monday morning and here it is Wednesday already. This past weekend, Erin and I spent lots of time (and a little money) on the "game room" project we've been planning. With the departure of cousin Andy's furniture, we had a completely empty room downstairs and decided a "game room" (read: video games) was in order. As the planning went on, Erin suggested we do the room in Husker colors as I have always mentioned wanting a room like that. And this weekend we did the major part of the work - painting.

First, to Home Depot to pick up the needed supplies. Besides the usual (brushes, rollers, drop cloths, tape, etc.) we also went ahead and got the official Glidden "Team Colors" paint in Nebraska Husker Red and Nebraska Husker White (which is actually just plain white, a key part of the later story). Our "design" was to paint the top half of the room white and the bottom half red. We additionally decided to paint the closet red too.

Saturday morning, we taped everything up, removed all the outlet covers, and put on a coat of primer. Let that dry a few hours (eating lunch and watching "House" episodes), and then put on the first coat of white on the top half, which went pretty quickly. It was obvious it needed a second coat (we already knew this would probably be necessary), so next coat on. We ran short on white, so Erin ran back to the store and got another quart of white, and another gallon of red, knowing now we'd need that. Meanwhile I did some spackle work where it needed it. When he got back with the paint restock, we noticed the white didn't have the same label on it. Thinking that "Nebraska Husker White" must be different than plain white because the first one had a special label on it, we went back to the store, only to have the snooty paint lady point out that the label on the first can just had zeros on the color added section. Back home to finish the white - at that point we were dead tired and off to bed.

Sunday, up for coffee and then to the red. We had to tape a perfect straight line all the way around the room to separate the red from the white. Not as easy as it sounds - we started out trying to do this with a level and a pencil mark, and it worked on one wall but not the others. So, being the engineer I am, we refined our process and did a combination of measurements from the ceiling and a level, and were able to get a nice perfect tape line all the way around (I got great joy out of our successful process refinement, I don't think Erin really saw the joy though :) Coat #1 of red - looked awful. You could see a combination of primer, the white paint underneath from the overlap (we didn't tape off anything on the white coat) and the old tan color. (Erin also had fun painting grafitti in the closet while he was doing the corners before I got in there with the roller). We then knew this would be a bigger job than just 2 coats. A few hours of drying, lunch, and "House" and we did coat #2. As we had dinner plans for the evening (new restaurant in the Raddison "Pescara" - great food!) we cleaned up and decided to finish up after we got home (which turned into waiting until the next day after having drinks at "Pescara").

Even after 2 coats it was not looking too good. I had to work Monday, so was planning to do more when I got home, but Erin was off Monday and took the initative and did 2 more coats. WOW, what a difference! The color really looked good, and our straight line was really VERY straight. We have been debating whether to put some sort of divider trim or black swashes or something but at this point, it looks nice enough where we might not have to.

An added bonus, using red and white colors, is that all of the outlet covers, vent covers, and closet shelves are white, and look SUPER sharp against the red paint.

With the red/black game chairs we bought, and the white shelf we used to put the TVs and game systems on, you can see we now have a complete game room. We are still going to put up a row of shelves around the top of the wall and probably hang my Husker flag and/or posters around.

The complete photo gallery is here:

2009 Game Room Painting

(you can see the cats tried their best to help, we had to keep them out most of the time though for fear of little red and white paw prints getting all over the house)