My first impressions of this house were "holy crap it's bright" and "those ceiling fans MUST go."
Unfortunately, S thinks that we may enjoy having ceiling fans some day. Fat chance. I hated them in Pcola, I hate them here. Apart from the outdated appearance of these particular fans, I don't like the feeling of air blowing down on me, especially in a bedroom. Give me a table fan any day! And honestly, if it's uncomfortable enough to need such a massive fan at night, I'm turning on the a/c. This ain't Maine, kiddos, we have central a/c here in the beehive.
With S away for a few days for a quick trip to Spain, or wherever he ended up, I sized the opportunity to swap out the old, outdated ceiling fan with the Eden pendant lamp from CB2:
The Eden is meant for apartment dwellers and as such comes with wiring that plugs into an outlet and then hangs from the ceiling with hooks. The hard-wired options were four times as expensive. So in order to hard wire the Eden, I took a quick trip to the Depot where I purchased an inexpensive single pendant lamp with an attractive ceiling mount cover.
The entire project took about an hour and makes a world of difference. First, I got up on a stool and vacuumed the ceiling fan. I discovered thick caked-on sawdust in every nook and cranny, which made me assume that the previous owners never cleaned the fans after having all the floors in the house sanded and refinished (not to mention the thick mass of spider webs). Gross.
Next I removed all of the fan blades with the screwdriver bit attached to the drill.
Which left me with a giant brass-like monstrosity in the center of the ceiling.
At this point I pondered leaving the monstrosity and some how affixing the drum shade between the motor and the three light fixtures. But, after some quick investigation I discovered that doing so would require my un-wiring and re-wiring about 50 little connections. Pass. So I ran downstairs, turned off the power and moved on to removing the bracket holding the fixture to the ceiling. Don't do as I do, shut the power off earlier, just to be safe.
Next I unscrewed a few wire nuts and viola, hole in the ceiling:
Motor on the floor:
Blades headed for the trash (not really, I'll clean them and sell or donate the whole thing):
Next I moved on to the new Depot pendant. It came with a five foot long hanging cord, of which I only needed about six inches. So I cut the cord, and then with a blade, carefully cut back the insulation to reveal the electrical wires inside.
I exposed about 3/4" of the wires with the trusty wire stripper:
And then hopped back up on the stool to make the connections. White to neutral, black to live, green to the ground nut. I then screwed the fixture into the supplied mounting bracket, tightened everything up, screwed in a bulb, and ran downstairs to flip the power back on. Worked.
So now instead of having the giant outdated ceiling fan in my office, I have this lovely drum pendant giving off cool, soothing light.
I think I can say that my office is almost finished. I just need to sew the window shades when my big fabric purchase arrives, and hang some artwork before the big reveal.Labels: design, electrical, little room, removing ceiling fan
