Painting begins...and continues...and continues

Painting was initially thought to be a pretty quick and easy task. Sarah and I, along with my parents help, painted the entire living room, both hallways, the kitchen, and the master suite of our house in a single weekend. With that experience under our belt, I figured that painting a single room the size of the media room would take a single day of work between Sarah and I. Boy was I wrong!

We settled on official NCAA licensed Texas A&M flat maroon by Glidden for the media room. There were a couple of reasons we settled on this paint color. It is a very rich and dark color which will help the planned high definition projector look brighter, the flat finish will reduce reflections, and I'm a pretty big fan of my alma mater. Granted, my Aggies are a little success challenged on the football field in the recent past, but I still love my school. Also, the media room will double as a sports/man cave for me, so Aggie maroon was a perfect color choice.

After calculating that we have 1004.3 square feet of surface to paint (yeah, I'm an engineer) I figured that we'd need about 5 gallons of paint to put two coats on the room assuming 200 sq. ft. per gallon. Just to be sure, we bought 6 gallons from Home Depot.

Unfortunately, painting a brightly colored room with such a dark shade of paint creates a problem we hadn't planned on. The drywall practically sucked the paint off the surface and made the entire first coat look blotchy and streaky. Also, it took way more paint to cover the walls and ceiling than we had planned. The 6 gallons we purchased were barely enough to give the room two complete coats, and it was obvious that the room needed at least a third coat!

The first day of painting took all of Friday, Jan 2nd. We went to home depot in the morning and then painted straight from 11am until 11pm, with a few breaks in between. Desperate for a break around dinner time, I even willingly sat through watching The Notebook with Sarah. As much as she cried at the end of the movie, I dreaded continuing the painting task. After completing the first coat, the room looked awful. Nothing sucks the motivation out of me like poor results. The streaks and splotches are clearly visible in these pictures we took with our iPhones. Trust me, it looked worse in person.

Struggling to put the first coat on the ceiling

Results of first coat unimpressive

The second coat went quicker, only taking about 4 hours on Saturday. Parts of the room began to show the true color I envisioned when we started, but there were still areas of streakiness.

Beginning third coat

The third coat went even quicker, taking only 3 hours on Sunday. I figure that the first couple coats helped seal the surface, allowing the third coat to spread evenly around the walls and ceiling.

Finally, after three days of inhaling paint fumes, the room is beginning to look like we had planned. The dark maroon color has really helped reduce the glare and brightness of the room. Also, I love the way the baseboards and door trim stand out against the dark walls.

These pictures really don't do the room color justice. The blinds are still off the windows, so there's a lot of light bouncing around. Once we recover the windows, the room will really start feeling like a media room! Next up is starting the electronics research and purchasing the theater curtains! Oh yeah, and it's time to rest!

Initial progress report

Instead of opening presents on Christmas morning, we spent our time putting blinds on the media room windows. Ideally this would wait until after the room is painted, but since my brother Daniel and his wife Kaela are joining us for Christmas they needed a decent place to sleep. I figured hanging sheets over the uncovered windows was just a little too tacky.

Picture of right rear corner of room showing new blinds and painter's tape

Once all of our guests went back home after Christmas, we spent a couple of hours taping the doors and baseboards to prep the room for painting.

View of left front corner of room showing painter's tape and a missing speaker hole

After that was completed, I spent another few perilous hours crawling around in the attic looking for my pre-existing wiring. From the layout of the room and the visible speaker wire boxes, I assumed that the room was pre-wired for 7.1 dolby digital surround sound. There's only two small problems...

First, the front left speaker wiring hole is missing. As you can see from the picture above, there is no speaker hole in the front left corner of the room. You can see the center channel speaker hole above the ladder and the right front speaker hole above the bathroom door.

Second, for 7.1 surround sound, there should be 7 speaker wires and 1 subwoofer wire coming out of the wall in the equipment rack corner of the room. When we purchased the house, only four wires were obvious. Somewhere behind the sheetrock there must be additional wires, but where?

The missing front left speaker wire was easily located once inside the attic. It was visible above the attic door. This was a relief because running wires after a house is built isn't the most fun thing to do. Encouraged, I began the search for the missing four speaker wire termination points to the equipment area.

After crawling around in the attic, I quickly determined that the location of the missing wiring box must be close to the visible one. That's good and bad news. The good news is that the wires are actually in the wall somewhere, again saving me from having to run them. The bad news is that they're located on an external wall. This means that there is no attic access and that the only way to find them is to start punching holes in the interior wall until I find it. Using my electronic stud finder and a screwdriver (thanks for the Christmas present Daniel!), I almost hit the mystery location with my first try. My first guess was close enough that with a flashlight I could see the wiring box two inches to the left. Success! Funny thing is that when I punched through the wall to open up the hole, I wasn't breaking through sheetrock. I was breaking through plaster and cardboard! This hole had been opened before, and then patched over! Why the original owner would go through all the trouble to have the room pre-wired and then cover over the holes, I'll never understand.

Sheetrock carnage and wiring termination locations

Now that the sheetrock work and taping is complete, it's time to paint!

Media Room Construction Begins!

In April of 2008, Sarah and I purchased our first home in Keller, Texas. We've spent the last 8 months doing all the things new homeowners do such as paint, purchase furniture, fix the odds and ends the previous owner neglected (because they were busy being foreclosed on!), and spend a fortune on a few drapes. Typical new home ownership drudgery if you ask me. It all needs to be done, and it helps make the house look more like a home. I think we're finally getting there!

Our house is a relatively typical home by suburban standards. Downstairs it has a split floorplan consisting of a master suite with sitting area, bathroom and walk-in closet, 2 additional bedrooms down a hallway with a bathroom, an office/study, kitchen, formal dining room, and a breakfast nook downstairs.

The upstairs consists of a single room...a 'bonus room' as the builders call it. It is approximately 400 sq. ft. and includes a full bathroom. Most in our neighborhood add a closet to this room and transform it into a second master suite or the dreaded mother-in-law suite. When we first toured the house with our realtor we knew exactly what purpose this room would serve for us...it would be our Media Room.

Now that the basic rooms downstairs have been furnished, we've decided that it is time to begin the task of transforming that 'bonus room' into a home theater/media room. We'll do our best to document the progress of the room and detail the lessons we learn and the decisions and purchases we make along the way. This blog will probably be a little less boring than watching grass grow...barely. That's ok by us. What does it say about YOU that you have nothing better to do than read this sad excuse for a blog?

Here's a few pictures of what we're starting with:

View of left rear corner of room showing uncovered windows and unfinished wiring boxes

View of left front corner of room showing attic door and MORE unfinished wiring boxes

View of right front corner of room showing bathroom door

Obviously we've got a lot of work to do before we can call this abandoned area of the house a full media room. We've got uncovered windows, unfinished wiring, brightly colored walls and ceiling, and ugly features such as the midget attic door and a bathroom door on the planned projector screen wall to deal with. Our goal is to have the room up and running in time for March Madness Final Four weekend. Considering we'll be doing all the work ourselves, I think that's an achievable goal unless we run into issues along the way.


First things on the list are to get the windows covered, the wiring plan figured out, the fixtures removed, and prep the room for painting. Over the Christmas/New Years break, we hope to do all that plus paint the room. More later...