Father & Daughter Electric Company

About six weeks ago Cam's ceiling fan stopped working.  The light came on without any issue, but no matter what we tried, the ever important motor would not turn the fan blades. Unfortunately, Cameron's room has always been the hottest one in the house, so I knew that we would eventually have to address the problem.  Thankfully, with Meg at camp and Cal in Indy this summer I was able to utilize all of the box fans from their rooms and keep Cam's somewhat cool.  Therefore, I was able to put off installing a new ceiling fan until everyone was settled in at school.  This weekend Doug and I picked out a new one that I really liked.  We had talked about hiring an electrician as we had two other fans that I was thinking about replacing.  In the end, however, I talked my Dad into helping me just replace Cameron's and we got started on it after lunch this afternoon.

When we first began I wasn't quite sure that I had made the right decision.  It seemed like a lot more work than the lights that my Dad and I had installed in the basement.  Plus, shutting off the breaker to Cam's room also turned off power to the entire upstairs.  Thus, it felt as though we were working in a small, hot room without much light.  The flashlights we had did help and once Mom arrived we had a third pair of hands to hold the extra flashlights, screws, etc.  At that point I knew that it would take time, but I was willing to keep going.

It was tedious work with a lot more parts and areas to attach then the basement fixtures, but after we figured out how to get the old fan out of it's socket we felt confident that we could install the new one.  We made sure to check it each step along the way to ensure that the fan motor would work before getting it all together.  There were some scary moments when the motor didn't run and the light didn't seem to be wired correctly.  Fortunately, we figured both problems out easily and after three and a half hours and several swear words, we were finished.  The fan worked perfectly as did the light.  Nothing fell off the ceiling when we turned it on and it didn't wobble.  Overall, it was a successful afternoon.  I know that my back will be sore tomorrow from lifting so many items above my head during the process, but it was definitely worth saving the $99 installation fee that Lowe's offered to charge us to put it up.