Early Apartment White Banished

Yea, we live in a house, renting.  You know what that means:  White walls and ceilings throughout.  And the lease states "blah, blah, white walls, blah, blah".  Gets boring and monotonous  But, what can you do?

After having our flat screen TV on it's pedestal for 6 months, sitting on top of the "entertainment center", the thought that if an earthquake hits, the TV will become "Art on the Floor" so I ordered a wall mount kit for it and chose this weekend to mount it. You must know that behind the entertainment center is about a thousand cords for Vontage phone, network and TV for the entire house.  Also gently jammed with the cords are the router, network switch, outdoor antennae amp, 3 of those surge protector extension cord things and the Vontage phone box.  A real spaghetti nightmare neatly stuffed out of sight.  That would have to be dealt with, too.  Charlene was recovering from back-to-back 12 shifts and woke up with only 5 hours sleep.  I had pulled the entertainment center about 4 feet away from the wall to work on the TV mount and told her what I was doing.  As I moved cables, boxes and surge protectors away from the wall, I noticed how yucky the wall looked.  Charlene was waking up (sort of) with a cup of excellent Keurig coffee as I turned to her and said, "Hey, wanna paint the wall while I got this stuff pulled away?".  Her first comment was, "Yea, but we can't do that.  The landlord would freak out".  I told her if they had any concerns, we would paint the wall "early apartment white" again when we moved.  Yes, in my mind, that's a real, live color - seen it for years.  Seemed to brighten her up immediately.

Within an hour, we were at Lowes, picking out paint sample chips colors.  I saw one of those "House Beautiful" photos on display with a shade of red that was very pretty.  I pointed it out and Charlene went for those shades in the display racks.  After a half an hours of searching, she picked out Cinnabar Red.  "Honey, what's a Cinnabar?", I ask.  Being a professional painter for decades and an artist, she put it simply, "It's a color that Chinese use when doing their paintings".  Makes sense and I sort of recognized it.  Our first intention was to take the sample chip home and hold it on the wall and check it out.  We both really liked it and decided to just buy it on the spot.  She said we'd need primer, too.  We took the paint chip to the guy at the paint desk and told him what we wanted.  He suggested a "battleship gray" primer to enhance the true color and Charlene agreed.  I didn't know house paint had different colors of primer, especially the color gray I've used as auto primer.  Huh, learned something new.  We got some additional support goodies like new paint tray, roller, brush and painter's tape.  I got a couple of things I thought I might need to put the TV mount up (remember the TV mount that started this all?).  As we were at the register, we were informed that with our receipt, the Chipotle Grill across the parking lot was offering a "buy one Burrito, get one free".

Both of us were kind of hungry so we headed over to Chipotle.  We've never been there so we really didn't know what to expect.  We found out real quick.  The biggest (had to be a couple of pounds) and best true Mexican Burrito we've ever had.  They build it to order and we loaded it up - shredded spicy beef, cheese, black beans, lettuce, salsa and gobs of other stuff I can't remember.  OH.....MY.....GOD!  Just the best in the whole world, I swear.  We could barely eat half, taking the rest with us for dinner later.

Arriving home, Charlene begins prep work, dragging out her commercial drop cloths and assorted painter-person stuff.  Me?  I begin the wall mount thing.  Got the level, tape measure, pencil and drill.  Instructions have been read and re-read, so I begin.  After a half an hour, I drill the holes and secure the mount with lag bolts.  It looks slightly unlevel but the bubble on the level shows it's dead on.  I temporarily hang the TV and put the level on top - dead on.  Charlene likes it but says it might be slightly unlevel.  I make her look at the level and she's happy.  I take everything down so she can paint.  She begins......click on the pictures for the full size, then use your browser's "Back" button to return here...........

She's already sanded the wall, spackled and taped it and is sweeping up "debris".  Next comes the weird battleship gray primer.

Next, the first of two finish coats, Cinnabar Red.  A gorgeous color....

and then, the final coat.........

I hate looking at wet paint, trying to figure out what it's really gonna look like when it's dry.

I spent spent about three hours sorting cords, cables and such making sense and beauty out of the mess behind the entertainment center.  Several more trips to Lowes for mounting hardware to afix the router, switch, antennae amp and Vontage box to the back of the "center".  Pushed the center in position, remounted the TV and assisted Charlene in hanging pictures.  Here's the final product, taken without flash last night.  On top of the right speaker is Pat's colored glass rocks with Voltaire candles lit.  Love it!

By the way, the TV was slightly unlevel.  Cheap level -  one side showed it level, the other slightly off.  Luckily, I had just enough "slop" in the mounting brackets on the back of the TV to level it.  Whew!  Nice holiday weekend.  Tonight we did the corn on the cob, grilled burgers and cupcake thing.  Nice, really nice 3-day weekend.