Sunday, December 09, 2007

I am sure I'll be done in a couple hours....

I knew that I spoke too soon the minute these words left my mouth. Still, I walked up stairs and began to dismantle the beautiful white ceiling fan that has hung in our room since it's last makeover by the PO.
The minute I took the fan down, I knew something was wrong and quickly thanked God that we were not awoken at night by by the fan falling on us. The wood shims used to square the fan should have been a clue but I didn't realize until I removed it that the fan was being held in place by and escutcheon plate attached to a mounting device with three screws put into the lath above. There is no way this was installed per the fan's instructions.
After making some structural arrangements and adding a new mounting bar, I hung the fan. But not after assembling it and disassembling it several times. Rod, ball, pin, washer, cover plate... ...oops, I forgot a screw. Rod, ball, pin, screw cover plate--- ---oops I forgot the washer. Too many pieces. What a mess. By the time I finally got to hanging the blades (which, if you didn't know, is supposed to be done when the fan is up), I was laughing hysterically as one by one, I dropped just about every screw that I tried to put in. When all was said and done, I spent 4 hours on the fan installation. Needless to say, this is about 3 hours more than I thought it would take. The fan looks nice -much nicer than I thought it would. We got the Craftmade fan off of fanshack.com. We added the standard Craftmade "mica" fixture. It was considerably cheaper than the "real thing" you would get from the mica fan dealer. It arrived only a couple weeks after ordering and was fairly easy to assemble. I'll get some better overall shots and some "before and afters" once we finish painting - likely Christmas weekend. Since it is the holidays, and I am in the "lighting" spirit, I capped off the weekend's activities by dressing up the entry way light. I go the idea from Martha but I am not sure she would have been as tacky as I, copying a page out of Dr. Seuss for her lights.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the fan and love the Dr Suess light, did you paint that yourself?

It took Chris about the same amount of time with our new fan...too funny. Enjoy - Carin

Mabel Sugar said...

Really dig the grinch, how'd you do that? Give us a post, will ya? We won't tell evil martha you're revealing her secrets ... As for the rest of your post, Jason just talked me into getting a ceiling fan for the kitchen, can't wait to dive into that one ... - Jennifer

Chris said...

The Grinch was accomplished by scanning in an image from the book, playing with it on Photoshop, and then printing it on a properly sized piece of printable transparency. Martha used the same technique to create her Halloween votives several years ago. It's pretty simple - the only trick is getting it the right size. If I had my bedroom finished I might even try being more creative with an original artwork for this but I feel doing so without the finished bedroom might compel my wife to look for greener pastures.

Kat said...

I love the Dr Seuss light, great job. The fans looks wonderful, love the light fixture.

Mabel Sugar said...

thanks for the info. :)

Nolan said...

Love the "mica" shade. We just bought a stand lamp from Target for a similar shade ;) which is Craftman-esqe but not the real deal.

We can sympathize with the ceiling fan installation. We had more than one light fixture that seemed to be affixed to either plaster and lathe or just to drywall. All of these were new fixtures, installed by the contractor who worked on the house before we bought it. Scary!