I had a ceiling fan suspended from a 16-foot ceiling that need replacing.
About 2 years ago, I turned the lights on to the fan and every single bulb blew at once. However, the fan continued to work fine.
My wife didn't nag me to fix it so it stayed unfixed.
Finally, the broken lights, 4-year collection of cobwebs between the wall and the ceiling, and the sorriest drywall taping job ever prompted me to cough up the $240 for a 12 foot fiberglass ladder.
It's the tallest stepladder I could find. Still, I was concerned it might not be tall enough.
The fan was actually attached to a 3 foot extension pole which connected the fan to the ceiling.
My first strategy was to replace the light kit on the fan. I bought a cheap one at Home Depot and tried that out. Didn't work. So I figured it was something up in the fan that was causing the problem and I'd either need to replace the fan or get rid of the fan and just put up a light in it's place. So, I contemplated for a while and decided since I was running out of money and really didn't want to deal with the wiring in the extension pole, I'd just buy a light and get rid of the fan.
When I pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot, I saw some cinderblocks stacked outside the Home & Garden area.
Perhaps I should go ahead and get 4 of those, I thought to myself. With my luck, the new $240 ladder will be 6 inches too short. So, I found a cart and put the blocks in there. I just left it sitting there outside. The cashier was on the other side of Wal-Mart and I really didn't want to push the blocks the half-mile across Wal-Mart just to turn around and push them back to where I was parked. I looked at the blocks hoping to find a UPC code but of course there wasn't one. I was just going to give it to the cashier and have her ring up 4 of them. So, I wrote the price down instead. $1.45 a piece.
Then I went and found my light and globe kit and it was about $15. I took my purchase to the cashier and explained the cinder-block situation. She told me I'd have to get someone in Home & Garden to ring them up. I told her there wasn't anybody in Home & Garden because it was past 10 pm. She told me I was wrong and I needed to go to the back and find them.
Another half-mile walk later, I find someone in Home & Garden. Their register is closed, they inform me. They can't help me. After about a 5 minute argument, they agree to look up the UPC code for me.
I finally get it and head back to the cashier who told me to go to Home & Garden. I made sure to let her know that
she was wrong and that there
wasn't anybody to ring me up in the back. She gave me a shrug of apathy to whities plight and then rolled her eyes and typed in the sku from the piece of paper that the Home & Garden guy had given me. The register gave a funny beep and the cashier knew what I already had guessed. They gave me the wrong "sku". I'd need to go back and get the right one, she suggested.
I told to go back and get it herself and explained to her that I could have very easily put the blocks in my trunk, saved $6.20 and been home by now for a lot less effort but I was trying to trying to break free of my kleptomania. I was trying to walk the narrow path but I wasn't walking another mile through the mexican version of hell to get a sku from some ignorant idiot who would probably just screw it up again.
"The blocks are a buck forty-five. Find the button that lets you type that in and let me go home."
She contacted the manager. A white guy who looked at me like I had a ten-foot booger hanging from my nose came and pushed the button.
Finally, I was on my way.
Well, I got home and set up my ladder and went to disconnect the ceiling an from the ceiling and realized that I had been right. Without the cinderblocks, even on my tippy-toes standing on the next-to-top step of the ladder, I would have been about 4 inches short of reaching.
So, I laid down towels to protect the carpet. Then brought in the cinderblocks and set them on the towels. Then tried to put the ladder on the cinderblocks. A 12-foot ladder is heavy and unstable as crap and as as men involved in a project at home know, Michael Jackson was wrong when he sang that song "You are not alone". You are
very much alone. So, I scurried back and forth trying to push a cinderblock on a towel on carpet to the right spot to support all 4 legs of the ladder. I thanked God that Sawyer was in bed. He would have been jumping on my back, otherwise.
Finally, when the ladder was right, I hurried up the ladder and reached to the top to unscrew the fan from the junction box. It was at that point that I saw my screwdriver laying on the floor beneath the ladder. So, I crawled back down the ladder trying to stay calm and patient and not cuss, and headed back to the top of the ladder again. I realized that I had a phillips head and I needed a flat head. So back down the ladder I went. The flat-head was outside. The cinderblock was blocking the back door I needed to go out so I had to go out the front door and around the house to get the flat-head screwdriver out of the utility room. When I made it to the utility room, I realized I had forgotten my keys to open the utility room door. So I went back to the front door to find them. Tracked em down, got the screw driver and went back to the house.
I wouldn't have gone into that much detail but that happened about 80 times that night and I figured rather than going into it 80 times, I'd just do it once.
So I got to the top of the ladder and unscrewed the cover to the junction box. When I opened it I realized I wasn't dealing with any regular junction box. The extension was connected to a sway bar of some kind that was reinforced to a wood board up in the ceilng. I realized the only way I'd be able to get to unscrew the swaybar would be to climb up in the attic. That would require someone to stand on the ladder downstairs and catch the ceiling fan when I got it loose from my vantage point in the attic.
Michael Jackson started singing in my head and I told him to shut up. My wife heard me and asked who I was talking to. I know she was thinking it had better not be her. I explained the situation to her and asked if she would be able to climb on the ladder and catch the fan. She said 'okay' but looked like she'd rather eat the 10-foot booger in my nose.
"Nevermind, I'll try to figure something else out".
Well, I climbed in the attic to look at the fan from the top. It was going to be a bitch to get out. There was 8-inch wide board for me to support myself on while I worked. The fiberglass itchies were already crawling all over my arms. I spread out and shined my flashlight down and noticed a loose wire not connected to anything. To make a long story less long, I tried every possible connection of the wire and retried the light kit (requiring 50 trips down the attic ladder and about 100 up the ladder downstairs--always remembering to flip the light switch before grabbing any wires again). Nothing worked. I'd have to take the fan down. Maybe I could just unscrew the fan motor from the extension pole and get a new fan. That would be better than getting Pam to catch the fan. Plus, it was going to be a real pain in the butt to get that swaybar thing loose. It was in their real tight. There was a nail sticking out and standing up at the end of the board I was laying on. It was right in the middle. No matter how I tried, I could not lay down and I really needed to lay down to get a good reach to the bolts that were holding the swaybar.
So, I went downstairs and tried to unscrew the fan-motor from the extension pole. It would not budge. I went back to the utility room and got a plumbers wrench and finally got it off. It was a good thing I didn't get Pam to catch it. The old fan must have weighed at least 50 pounds. No wonder they had that thing so well-supported.
So, got back into my car and went to Wal-Mart. It was about 1 in the morning now. Could not find a single fan that would fit the extension pole. And they didn't sell extension poles. So, I decided I'd just have to find a way to get the reinfored sway-bar down and put the normal junction box back in and put up a light.
So, back home I went. I had to find my socket wrench. When I found it, I opened it from the wrong side and every socket fell into a jumbled mess. I'd have to fix it later.
I made my way up in the attic and finally got the sway bar loose and was able to just barely keep it hanging so I could go downstairs and pull it down from there.
Around 3 in the morning, I finally started putting the light up. A slew of slapstick comedy of errors later, I had it wired, working and ready to finish. I got the glass globe and looked for the retaining screw that would keep the globe from falling. It was nowhere to be found. So, back to Wal-Mart I went. I kicked the little white haloe'd guy off my shoulder and went and found an unopened box like I'd bought and stole the screw out of it. I got back home to finish the job.
By this time, my arms were trembling everytime I lifted them. I started to screw the globe on and the tremble started in my fingers and worked itself down to my feet. I was tired. But I was resolved to get that light fixed before I went to bed.
Finally, it was done. I flipped the switch and stood back and basked in the glory of a completed project. I wanted to go wake Pam up so she could see the finished project but I let her sleep.
This is the part of being a man that women will never get.
