how start repaint thread with another thread

Question

I'm trying to color something in my program, but because the coloring proccess(repaint) is in a thread, the function thread.join() causes the recolor method to pause.

I want the repaint method to run inside the thread, but the whole code to wait until the global recoloring thread has finished its job.

I noticed that if I delete the ActionListener it works well, but I want the animation to work with the click of one of the buttons

Edit:

public class Main {
static Button [][] matrixButtons = new Button[7][2];
protected static Image imgRed;
protected static Image imgFreeSpace;

public Main()
{
    File f1= new File("Images/free_cell.png");
    File f2= new File("Images/player_one.png");
    try {
        imgFreeSpace = ImageIO.read(f1).getScaledInstance(90, 90, Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    try {
        imgRed = ImageIO.read(f2).getScaledInstance(90, 90, Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    JFrame jFrame = new JFrame();
    GridLayout gridLayout = new GridLayout(7,1);
    JPanel jPanel = new JPanel(gridLayout);
    jFrame.add(jPanel,BorderLayout.CENTER);
    for(int i = 0; i < 7; i++)
    {
        for (int j = 0; j < 2; j++) {
            matrixButtons[i][j] = new Button(imgFreeSpace);
            matrixButtons[i][j].setPreferredSize(new Dimension(90, 90));
            matrixButtons[i][j].addActionListener(new AL(j,imgRed));
            jPanel.add(matrixButtons[i][j]);
        }
    }   
    jFrame.pack();
    jFrame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args){

    new Main();

}

class AL implements ActionListener {
    protected int col;
    protected Image image;

    public AL(int col,Image image) {
        this.col = col;
        this.image = image;
    }

    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        animate(1, image);

    }
}

public static void animate(int column, Image image) {
    Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            try {
                Image freeCellImage = imgFreeSpace;
                for (int i = 0; i < 7; i++) {   
                    matrixButtons[i][column].setImage(image);
                    matrixButtons[i][column].repaint();

                    Thread.sleep(100);

                    if (i != 7) {
                        matrixButtons[i][column].setImage(freeCellImage);
                        matrixButtons[i][column].repaint();
                    }
                }
            } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
            }
        }
    });

    t.start();
    try {
        t.join();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {

        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    System.out.println("test");
}

}

Button class:

public class Button extends JButton {
private Image image;

public Button(Image image) {
    this.image = image;
}

public void setImage(Image image) {
    this.image = image;
}

public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
    super.paintComponent(g);
    g.drawImage(image, 0, 0, null);
}

}