Monday, April 23, 2012

I have a whole slew of first world problems!

Therefore I am blessed.... just saying.

Here are a few I was annoyed with this week - pretty silly:

  • I couldn't keep my pony tail from slipping out during my soccer game.  Why would my hair tie not hold my hair tight enough? 
  • The batteries fell out of my dog's shock collar somewhere in the backyard. How am I supposed to get my dog to mind now?
  • I burnt my hand doing dishes cause the water from the faucet was too HOT!  OUCH.... but thankful for hot water.
  • I can't keep the door to my freezer closed because it is so full.  I don't even really know what is in there, I really need to clean it out.

So here is a video I thought summed it up well, and made me laugh.

Anyway,  this weekend I concurred the fan!  Awwww it felt so good to FINALLY get that darn thing going.  So here are the gory details.  Let's just say it all began a quite morning probably about six months ago.  Phil had left early for a rotation and I slept in a little bit as I was working from home.  I was awakened by a slam which I attributed to Phil leaving in a hurry (which isn't like him to slam something - but I was asleep so it made sense).  Then a few moments later I heard another, which I figured was Phil forgetting something and coming back in and then again leaving in a hurry (Phil forgetting something is VERY like him - but again, the slamming isn't).  So anyway, when I finally got up that morning I walked out of my bedroom to find a fan blade laying in hallway, it had flown all the way across the house from the kitchen to the hall way where it greeted me.  And I guess in the process of losing a blade the fan became unstable and threw the opposite blade off as well.  These blades of course accounting for the slams I heard.  All that to say we no longer had a functioning fan in our kitchen and we needed to replace it.
Then our friends just recently bought a house and had a fan in the master bedroom they were replacing with one that matched their decor and said they would give us the fan they were taking down!  YAY, free fan!  But that fan was a dark wood which would be awesome in my living room space with the fireplace, which currently has a white fan.  So we decided to move the white fan to the kitchen and the new fan in the living room.  But moving ceiling fans isn't really a one person job so I needed some assistance.  Our good friend Isaiah was over being a good semaritan and helping us out with the yard and he also made time to help me with the fans so we took on the project Saturday.
I have installed at least four fans in my life with just me and a roommate so I was pretty confident we could do this fairly easily and without the fear of dying.  But let's be honest we are talking about electrical work and other than electricians and super handyman types there aren't too many of us out there who know exactly what is going on when a bunch of wire show up.  So we began the tedious process of working upside down to completely blade-by-blade take apart the two fans.  After a few choice words and some Pinterest ol' trickery
we had that fan down and ready to by put up in the kitchen.  We got the whole fan up and back together turned the power back and and low and behold the fan worked!  .... the light... didn't :(  Sad face!
Then we went to hang the other fan and realized we didn't have the proper brace to hold it... another sad face.  I did a little googling and when that failed I took a trip to Home Depot.  The gentleman at HD was very helpful and I went home ready to fix the light problem, the missing bracket problem still has yet to be solved.
So I went home took apart the fan AGAIN and fixed the wiring as instructed.  I decided it would be best to test it this time before putting the WHOLE fan back together.  Novel I know!  So we tested it and EVERYTHING WORKED!  hip hip hooray!!!! So I put it all back together tighened it all down for extended use, turned the power back on for the final time and do you know what happened!!!! The light worked and the FAN didn't!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! I TESTED IT.  So with that I took a break.
The next day re-energized I again disassembled the dang fan and fiddled with all the wiring.  I don't know if I did anything actually productive but I did a little testing and the booger worked.  So I decided to put it together a little at a time and test along the way... this time it worked at every step and even in the finished state!!!


So I have a working kitchen fan, again!  The other space... well...

Not so much.




1 comment:

  1. Electrical fixing in the ceiling is one of the hardest part of the house to fix, especially when it takes time to finish the job.

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