A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words...

You may not think this picture could possibly be worth a thousand words, but I sure do. And at least half of those words would be cusses. And it takes a lot and I mean a lot for me to cuss.

It all started a week ago today (I think, it's amazing how dates get totally lost and confused in my brain). I was trying to be a "big girl" and change the light bulb in the fan all by myself while Jeff was out. Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, and it didn't really seem like all that big of a deal to me, but just something I could do to lessen the already overloaded Jeff. You see, Jeff changes all the light bulbs in our house, with the exception of lamps which I can easily reach. He gets to be the light changer because with his height, all he has to do is reach up, where as I have to find a chair or something else hopefully stable to stand on and move it to the location of the light just to be able to reach it. So, you can see why Jeff is the light changer, just plain ease. Anyway, I was going to be a big girl and do it myself. I got the light bulb down from the closet (I had to pull a chair over just to get the bulb down in the first place) and then I moved the table that is directly under the fan slightly so as to have access to the bulb. I removed the glass light cover thing and so far, so good. No comes the first of many crappy parts. As I remove the light bulb from the socket a huge "POP" is heard across the house and a giant spark flies at me as I somehow manage to pull just the glass part of the bulb out of the socket and leave the metal part in there. So I'm freaking out thinking I've just electrocuted myself (nope, just a little jump start for the heart) and then realize that now I'm not going to be able to change the bulb myself and I'm going to have to tell Jeff what a complete loser I am. Thankfully Jeff was really kind a sweet about the whole thing and just laughed at me a little bit.

So the next morning or afternoon, I guess it doesn't really matter... the next day Jeff started to take the light socket apart and try and remove the metal casing or whatever it's called from the socket. Sadly he wasn't able to save the socket, but we figured it was no big deal, we'd just go to the hardware store and buy a replacement socket. Not too hard. Ya right! Well, it wouldn't have been had we actually looked in the fan accessory section rather than the lighting section. They actually sold the exact socket for our fan in the ceiling fan section, we just didn't look there. We found another one that would work fine, but well, it had the whole screw type wiring thing that neither Jeff nor I had ever worked with (I've actually done no wiring or electrical work prior to the whole debacle, and Jeff only minor, such as installing the ceiling fan initially) so it was a little frustrating learning the whole technique. So we finally, actually more accurately, Jeff finally got the new socket in place and we were excited, thinking that this was it, it should work now. Right?! Wrong! After trying a few more times to make sure the wiring was correct we realized things weren't going to be so simple. We couldn't figure this whole thing out with our limited wiring knowledge so we called our home improvement know-it-all - My Dad. After trying to describe our problem from something like 3000 miles away he gave us a couple things to try. We tried them and still nothing worked. By this time we're ready to move on to a whole new ceiling fan, but not wanting to put out $150 for a new one decided to give it a few more chances. We tested all the different wires, tried hot-roding the thing (can you hot-rod a fan?) and even succumbed to taking pictures and emailing them to my dad so that he could get a better understanding and maybe be able to help some more. It was a huge mess and even bigger frustration. It's now taken hours for us to figure out and we've actually figured out nothing.

As a last ditch effort to save some cash we decided to try replacing the after market remote control that we had installed initially. Finally, something like 4 days later and as many or more hours laboring over this stupid ceiling fan we finally got the light functioning properly. And yeah me, I did my first wiring job and to perfection, I might add - it worked the first time. Now to just close everything up and walk away before our marriage dissolved under the pressure of yet another home improvement/repair.

Seriously, wouldn't it be nice if things just worked the way they were supposed to? As we tried to put the metal casing thing up back at the top of the ceiling we ran into a myriad of problems. The first major one was that the thing wouldn't go all the way up to the ceiling without knocking the after-market remote receiver onto the motor part of the fan stopping the fan from moving. After a lot of under-my-breath cussing I got Jeff to help me out. I remebered having similar problems the first time, but thought I was doing it the same way that I remembered solved the problem the first time. I was, but I just wasn't getting the whole zap-strap thing tight enough to hold the receiver in place. Jeff tried a few times and after some cussing of his own got frustrated and I gave it another go. Finally I got it secured, now to just get the thing in place. The next problem was that the metal casing would twist on properly, the whole apparatus just twisted with it. It took a ton of muscle and sheer determination and sure even a little more cussing and we/Jeff finally got it in place. The next problem - does it ever seem to end? - it shook, and not just a little bit. It was more of a vibrating and rattling sound but whatever, it was annoying and totally not something we could just overlook. After some more cussing on both of our parts we finally came up with a solution - loosen the screws just enough and put some of the plastic that we had cut of the wires between the ceiling and the metal fan casing. Amazingly there was silence. And there could not have been any better sound.

Finally after what seemed like eons the ceiling fan was back in place functioning normally and with a working light.

See I told you it was worth at least a thousand words. And I completely skipped out at least half of the words that I would never want to repeat again. There is more that happened that day with kids getting in the way and nap times being totally messed up, but well, that would detract from the real message... don't waste your time trying to repair a $70 ceiling fan, go out and buy the nicer one that you wished you had got in the first place and put it up in the old one's place.