The nice thing about an unfinished basement is that when you paint, you don't have to worry about taping any woodwork, the floor, or the ceiling. It's a lot easier but it still took some time.
For the main area that is to become the home theater and rec-room, I wanted a color that would look dark when the lights are out. This was to enhance the theater look when we run the projector. But we didn't want the basement too dark either.
The solution was to paint two sides darker, and two sides lighter. The darker walls would contain the home theater. We chose a darker green, and a lighter tan.
It all went on fairly easily. Even though it seemed like there were quite a few roller marks in the dark green, by the time it dried they completely disappeared.
When the paint was dry I proceeded to put all the white outlet and light switch covers on. They really jump out from the green paint.
The excersize room took a little more work. We chose purple and yellow based on the color scheme of a conference room where I work. The colors are supposed to stimulate creativity and motivation and seemed a good way to make a fun place to exercise.
Unfortunately, in order to get the color purple that we wanted, we had to use a lower quality paint. As the guy in the paint store described it, the paint was practically all pigment.
We were a little worried about the durability of this type of paint so we decided to cover the purple with a coat of polyurethane. This turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.
After two coats of yellow and purple, and then two more coats of polyurethane, the walls had a nice, shell-like coating. The yellow walls looked great, however on the purple walls you could see every single roller mark.
We even tried another coat of poly but there was no saving it. Finally we decided to buy a lighter shade of purple and some glaze and give it a faux finish. This masked all of the roller marks.
So in the end, the exercise room has 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of paint, 2 coats of polyurethane, and 1 coat of faux finish.
It's a good thing were done because we've really had our fill of painting.
