And Then the Ceiling Started to Crumble

So all we wanted to do was put in a ceiling fan. Famous last words...? Here's what happened: I've been wanting to put in a ceiling fan in our master bedroom since the second we moved in. For two reasons: my body temperature mysteriously rises to 120 degrees when I sleep and our main air flow is in the hallway in between the office and the guest bedroom. So this part of the house stays crispy cool while our bedroom is a couple of degrees warmer and a lot stuffier.

But first we had to find the fan. We wanted flush mount mainly because we didn't want the fan to rock any but also we don't have vaulted ceilings so we didn't want to make the room feel closed in. We also wanted globe lighting and not the candle obra style. We were also a lot pickier then I thought we would be. We didn't like brass, or decorative scroll, or black, or weird finishes. So needless to say it took about three trips to both Home Depot and Lowe's to find something we liked. I can't say it's our dream fan, but it definitely fell into our budget (well actually we scored it for free, since Nana offered to pay for it!).

Here's the fan we went with. 

It has a remote. And it says it repels dust (sweet!). 

It also says it cuts cooling costs by 47%. 

I haven't figure out how.

We also had to pick up this bracket for around $12 (this was suggested by the fan guy at Home Depot) to help hold up the fan in between the ceiling joist. 

Operation Put up the Fan Part 1: B takes down our globe light and takes a look around to see if he can put up the fan Thursday evening. He sees that we (by we, I definitely mean him) need to get into the crawl space above the master.  This crawl space is separate from the rest of the attic since it's an add on and is super small and cramped by air duct work. So he takes a peak around and decides that my uncle (the self-proclaimed everything man) should come over and give it a try.

Operation Put up the Fan Part 2 : The everything man comes over Friday afternoon to take a peak and thinks that he may not even need to climb up into the crawl space at all. After four hours and two trips to Lowe's he realizes he does not have the proper tools to finish the job. He decides to come back Sunday.

Operation Put up the Fan Part 3: Uncle comes back Sunday with ladder and a huge tool box. He uses the bracket that we bought and tries to hang the fan. Then...the ceiling starts to crack and fall into dusty little pieces all over our floor. Not much, but with every screw into the bracket more and more starts to fall. He pushes up on our ceiling and it moves like marshmallow fluff. He tells us the sheetrock in our ceiling is supposed to be about 3/4 inch but ours is barely 1/2 inch. He suggests we do one of two things: tear down the entire ceiling and replace it with thicker, high quality sheetrock (ick!) or buy a decorative medallion to place over the damaged part of the ceiling. He also says he is going to get a better bracket that's "super strong" to hold up our fan. A medallion costs $20. We settle for the medallion.

So Operation Put up the Fan Part 4 commences tonight. We will see.

...to be continued...