The Wall of Chocolate

For the last 2 nights I have been working hard in my basement to ready things for the installation of a series of cabinets that will be used as an entertainment center.  While we are away on vacation my brother, who is much more talented at these kind of things than me is going to install the cabinets.  The only work that will remain to be done once he is finished is to install a counter top on the cabinets and wire everything for satellite TV, sound and electricity.  I should be able to handle those tasks without too much problem, as the electrical outlets are already there, the sound is easy and DirectTV will do the satellite installation.

Once I had all of Zack's toys removed and the furniture moved away it was time to paint the wall on which the entertainment center is going.  The wall is about 12 feet in length and was originally painted an off-white color.  The interesting aspect of this work was the color that I choose to paint the wall.  Eventually I will be mounting a large flat screen TV on this wall, so I wanted to create a dark backdrop so that whatever was playing on the TV would really stand out - like the movie screen at a movie theater.  I used Behr paint from Home Depot and the name of the color I choose for the wall in Behr Paint's vernacular is "Bear Rug Brown".  It was a very dark color!

I got everything prepped for painting on Tuesday evening and then began the painting on Wednesday around 10:00PM.  Thankfully I only had one wall to paint so it didn't take too long, but because of the color I was using it was definitely going to take a second coat.  I finished up my first coat around 11:30PM on Wednesday and then I started the second coat Thursday after work.  The second coat went very quickly and I was done by 6:30PM.  The problem with painting a wall this shade of brown is that the paint really looks like liquid chocolate.  Every time I poured the paint into the roller pan, I really wanted to stick my finger in it and taste it as it really looked like chocolate!  I know that is really silly but that is what I thought each time I poured the paint from paint bucket into the pan.

The wall came out looking very good - though I do have some touch up to do around the sides as the brown paint leached through my blue painter's tape and made the joint between the white walls and brown not exactly even.  (I should have used the old tricks I learned years ago and once I put the tape down I should have caulked over it and I would have gotten a perfectly straight line.  But I hate doing the prep work so now I will do the touch up.)

Here's what the final version of my chocolate wall looks like:

I really think this is going to look great with my entertainment center in front of it and the TV mounted on the wall.  But of course I am wildly biased as I was the person who picked the paint color!

I definitely engage in a lot of stream of consciousness thinking.  Because I was doing the painting with brown, chocolate looking paint last night I was reminded of a song from several years ago that was a big viral hit on Youtube.  So I had to go back and listen to it again last night.  Since I think it is an amazing song in terms of the message it conveys and the talent the singer exhibits, I decided to link it to this Blog Post.  The song is called "Chocolate Rain" by a guy by the name of Tay Zonday.  If you have never heard it before take a listen as I think it is a really amazing song.

Not much else to say...  EXCEPT.... TOMORROW IS THE START OF VACATION!!!!  Woohoo!!  I am looking forward to where we are going and all that we are going to see and experience.

Originally I was thinking of taking a "digital holiday" for vacation but instead I have decided I will take my digital life lines with me and where possible be connected.  Hopefully we will have Internet coverage while we are in Yellowstone.  If so - I plan to try and blog on most days as I think we will be having quite a lot of adventure and I want to post some of the pictures that I take.

As always - thanks and peace to all! ~J.