A Splash of Aggie

On May 16th Bryan and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary!  It was a wonderful day.  We grabbed lunch at McAllister's and then my sweet hubby suffered through Letters to Juliet so that I could watch the chick flick I wanted to see.  After the movie, we came home and Bryan set up my present--a wonderful hammock!  I made us both mugs of ice cream and we laid on the hammock, eating our ice cream and reading.  Of course, it was super hot so after about 30 minutes we decided on a change of plans.  We disassembled the hammock and took it upstairs!

Before we started reassembling, we looked at the game room, and then at each other.

"Do you want to?" Bryan asked me, with a mischievous look in his eye

"Sure," I smiled back at him.

"Really?!"  I nodded.  And so, we went ahead and....

...went to the Home Depot!  Had you going there, for a minute, huh? lol

We finally decided to paint the accent wall in the game room.  Long ago we had selected two color samples and we decided to go with the lighter shade of, you guessed it, MAROON!!!  We purchased the tinted tintable primer and the can of paint.  Once we got home, we took the first step of taping the wall.

Next step was to crack open the primer and get to work!  Once we were done, had we been going for a gray wall, it would have been perfect!

At this point, it was already pretty late.  We had gone for our anniversary dinner--sushi! and Bryan even found one he likes!  He was so sweet to me.  Anyway, we started on the wall after dinner, so by the time we finished priming the wall it was time for bed.  When we got home from work on Monday, we started with the actual color!

As you can probably tell, the first coat dried thin in some places.  It was very frustrating for me, having never really used a red-type pigment for painting.  I should have done a bit of research before starting--apparently, even with tinted primer, it is normal for red pigment paints to take multiple coats.  We let the paint dry for the night and then picked back up with another can of paint on Tuesday.

I did some technique research before starting, and we also bought a better roller pad.  With the thicker pad and good advice, I painted without pushing down hard on the roller.  The second coat looked great right from the start.

We let it dry overnight and then Bryan untapped the wall.

We cleaned up the painting supplies, and rearranged the furniture.  We put the TV on the old entertainment center and put the futon in the library.  And then, for kicks, we set the hammock back up...in the game room!

I'm just extremely happy to have finally started decorating and arranging the upstairs.  And I have to admit, swinging in the hammock upstairs is much more comfortable than being out in the beginning of the Texas summer heat!