Splashes of color abound!

We've made it to the point of paint, at least in the basement. We may have thrown caution somewhat into the wind by assuming rooms won't need any additional work, but we needed to feel a sense of progress.

Jen started off by painting the far corner room of the basement which will be used as her office. This room is one of the few rooms to have a drywall ceiling, as well as a framed and drywalled soffit for the HVAC. Since she will use this as a room to get away (from the remaining chaos now running rampant throughout our house), she chose a nice calming shade of purple, with white ceiling paint (so the headroom isn't intimidating). Looks pretty sharp with that daybed in there, doesn't it!

It was very fulfilling to finally get a sense of accomplishment and progress as we've finally got one room done (Almost. Still needs trim and carpeting). There's even a functional phone and cable jack (if we subscribed to cable that is)!

For this little event Kenny purchased a power paint roller as a gift. Jen rocked and rolled all over the walls with that little guy, and the tool is now her exclusive domain.

Jay got a little more ambitious on the other hand, with the commercial paint sprayer Frankie had lent us and decided to use it on the remaining ceilings (big room and hallway), as well as the music studio. We had trouble deciding on a comforting yet creative color for the music studio, and we finally settled on the same color - Purple! Only a much deeper shade. We plan to use a deep burgundy as an accent color to this.

Painting with a sprayer turned out to be quite an adventure. As Jay was ensuring there was adequate coverage (that is a really dark shade, after all), there was a lot of paint applied. After the room was covered and the mists began to settle, mountain peaks started to form on the walls.. Whoops! Way too much paint had caused massive running. Ah!

Without knowing what else to do, Jay grabbed a roller and went over the runs in an attempt to smooth them out. This quickly developed into a disaster as the roller lifted the paint almost completely off the wall, leaving a pinkish stain where it had once been purple. After deciding to let it dry for a few hours and try it again, there were similar results with only mild improvement.

The runs were gone, but now the room looked like a mural of pink mountain majesties in a purple twilight. Sounds pretty, but trust me. It wasn't.

On the next day the only option was to go over the walls again (with the roller this time) and apply a new coat (or two. or three) to spots as needed and hope they blended in. It may be hard to tell from these photographs, but it actually turned out halfway decent. The room seems much smaller now (and so dark!) but at least the coverage is mostly even.

We had already discussed covering the bottom of the walls with wainscotting (not yet installed) so instruments and cases didn't ruin the walls, so it may just turn out to be okay. The wainscotting may also brighten up the room a bit too. But we're not quite sure exactly how to make it. Do we run the wainscotting 1/3 up the wall (as shown) or do we go higher with it (4 feet off the ground.. about another foot from what is shown)? Any ideas, opinions, or options are welcome!