Webb Family Blog

As I mentioned, more was to come with our home improvement project. The second phase of our project was our master bathroom. I was able to knock that job out faster than the guest bathroom, thankfully. This time, Kellie chose Behr Paint’s Arctic Ocean (PMD-99) for the walls… this color is a slightly grayer blue than the sidebar on my website (to the left).  We again wished to replace the strip of globe lamps, but this time with two separate light fixtures. This presented a slight issue. When I removed the old light fixture, there was a hole a foot wide with one edge of the hole up against a stud. I took the opportunity of having such a large hole by taking a paddle bit and drill extension, then drilling a hole through this stud. I then ran a piece of 14/2 Romex (electrical wire) to a new hole created as far over to the left of the new void and as far right of the original void. I then patched the huge hole in-between. After repairing and texturing the hole, I painted the area. Kellie and I then chose the two lights to go in.

Since I’m showing pictures, I guess I can show the lights in the guest bathroom…

and the new shower in the guest bathroom…

Kellie and I had a bit of a disagreement as to the placement of the hand-held sprayer for the shower… I guess it is because I’m a bit taller, but I was thinking it should be close to the same height as the standard shower head… Kellie thought it should be lower so kids could reach it.
Tomorrow we are heading off for Fish Camp… YEA!!! I’ve been looking forward to this trip for some time now. The current plan is for Kellie and I, along with Kellie’s parents (Phil and Donna) will leave around noon. My parents and my brother Richard will leave Waterford tomorrow and we plan on reaching Fish Camp in the late afternoon/evening. My sister Debbie and her husband Homer, along with Jared and Caleb will arrive on Thursday. My sister Vicki, with I presume her husband Kevin and Xander and Quinn arrive on Friday. On Saturday night, we plan on making homemade ice cream. I have a 4-quart, wooden bucket ice cream maker that has both an electric motor and a hand-crank, allowing for either method of making ice cream. Debbie has a recipe for mint chocolate chip and bringing the ingredients.

For this trip, we will be camping in a tent… on a full-height, queen-size bed. This is kind of a cross between roughing it and sleeping in comfort; at least that is the plan. This morning, I took Bear to Classic Kennels, the place he and Bogie (Phil and Donna’s German shepherd) go when we go on trips together. Hopefully Bear behaves himself. Here’s hoping everything goes well.

As I have just finished off my 11th class from the University of Phoenix, I have started to tackle some long needed home improvement projects. The first of which is fixing up our guest bathroom. For those that have ever stayed at our home overnight or needed to take a shower, you may have realized we had a problem with our guest bathroom shower. The valve did not turn on or off properly. I also was unable to take it appart the proper way due to something wrong with the handle. I ended up mutilating the handle to the shower to get it off. It took me a bit before I was able to figure out what type of shower valve I had. It turns out it is a Moen Posi-Temp valve. Apparently it is supposed to prevent the shower from getting suddenly hot when someone flushes to toilet or similar water pressure fluctuations occur. Any way, after destroying the handle, I needed to get a new cartridge. I first went to Lowe’s Home Improvement. It took a bit of looking, but I found a valve to work with this shower, some after-market brand for $61.75 after tax. I also needed to go to Home Depot and happen to look there too. They had a Moen branded replacement valve cartridge for $41.83. I took it home and quickly fixed the problem. Now, to add insult to injury, I happen to later stop at an ACE Hardware… they had an after-market brand for $17-something… oh well, I guess their is some comfort in having the same brand as the valve assembly.

While the shower was a bit of work, it is just the tip of the iceberg of projects going on around here. Several months ago, we had a mouse issue here in the house, where a mouse made a hole in the ceiling of our guest bathroom. This is an extremely upsetting issue to have, invading rodents. Anyway, I patched the hole. We also have been wanting to change the sink faucet and lights in the bathroom. When I took off the old lights above the sink, I found that for some reason, we had not one, but two holes behind the light fixture. Our new light takes up less space on the wall and the hole with no electrical wires would no longer be covered. I had to patch this hole as well. Patching holes means needing to paint too. Kellie chose colors for both the ceiling and the walls. The walls will be a medium blue color. For those that care, it is Olympic Paint’s “C54-2 Souvenir”. The ceiling will be Olympic Paint’s “B40-1 Magical Moonlight,” a white color. As I was preparing the room for painting, I realized that at some point, the room was a very dark purple color with a white fleur-de-lis pattern. I would not have liked this. At the moment, I have primed the walls and ceiling with Kilz Premium primer. I am letting the primer have a chance to fully dry before I paint the ceiling. Hopefully I’ll have time to paint it all tomorrow, as I have to return to work on Wednesday. I will try to paint the ceiling before going to bed to give it a chance to dry before painting the walls tomorrow. I then have hardware to change.

The bathroom is still just a small part of the overall transformation going on in the house. More will follow.