This was the light we had in our small entry.
The lights in the bedroom, office, and hall all looked like this one (which has, obviously, been disassembled).
So, we had four lights to replace. One would not have expected this sort of work to take a long weekend to tackle - but, this being a rather quirky house, it did.
Our house, like nearly all houses in the area, has no air conditioning. With the gorgeous weather this is not a big problem, but occasionally the house does get a little stuffy. So we decided we would put ceiling fans in the bedroom and office. We had one ceiling fan already that we got from a neighbor back in Virginia which has traveled through a couple of rental homes with us, now ready for permanent installation in the office. We bought a second fan, as well as a pair of lights for the hall and entry, at Home Depot. Brendon crawled up in the attic to make sure there was proper bracing to support the fans, and on Saturday afternoon the install began with the office.
I assisted by handing tools up and holding screws. And, of course, taking pictures. Bettie helped, too - as usual.
The fan went up easily enough, but suffered a significant wobble. So after taping pennies to blades, adjusting screws, Internet troubleshooting, and trying to get all the blades level... Brendon managed to significantly decrease the wobble. (The fan is NOT to be run on high until further adjustments can be made, lest it rend itself violently from the ceiling.)
Short on daylight hours, we moved to the bedroom. Bettie helped some more.
Then the real trouble began. We had bought a remote control mechanism with a box that would mount, theoretically, where the light switch was and control both the light and fan speed. While Brendon was on the ladder trying to adjust the fan's bracket to compensate for a not-so-level ceiling, I removed the light switch and tried to connect the wiring. The problem, shockingly, was not with the wiring (which was extremely old and nasty), but came when I tried to get the control box to fit into the cutout in the wall. Apparently - and we had learned this in the kitchen remodel, but hadn't made the connection to this project - our 61 year old house has thin walls compared with today's standards. As hard as we tried, we could not get the remote flush into the wall.
So this had to be returned. Which, because of the fading daylight, meant putting everything on hold until the next day, and going the remainder of Saturday with capped wires and a bedroom lit by bedside lamp light only.
Things went somewhat more smoothly on Sunday, though some of the fan parts were a little fiddly and many screws were dropped from the ladder. Eventually the fan went up, and worked beautifully... for 24 hours. Today I walked in the bedroom with clean laundry to put away, hit the button on the NEW remote (a hand held one, with a plastic wall mount that is next to the light switch), and no light came on. More troubleshooting, but Brendon had the small wiring problem worked out in 15 minutes or so.
As for the hall and entry lights, they were much quicker and easier, though by no means perfectly straightforward. In the hall, the junction box was recessed quite a bit, so it required some tweaking before the bolt would extend all the way through the globe to the screw. And in the hall, the light appears to have been original to the house, its base was painted on, and the wiring looked like this.
But, at the end of the holiday weekend, here are the lights.
Office:
Hall:
(The light in the entry is the same as the one in the hall, and it has been successfully installed. I guess I just didn't get a picture.)
