Tag: light fixture

July 15, 2025 – Summer Projects 2

July 15, 2025 /

I had a great idea for my wife’s 50th birthday. It has taken 32 years for her to warm up a tiny bit to firearms. I have never been involved in any crimes and nobody has gotten injured when I am around. She has finally come around to recreational shooting can be a lot of fun. I thought that I would buy her a really nice looking 22 rifle. That is until she wanted to redo the bathroom to the tune of $2000 for her birthday. How can I deny that?

The bathroom wasn’t exactly the bathroom. It also included replacing all of the light fixtures in our bedroom. We had a free day during the weekend of the fourth, that is hard to believe so I took on the task of replacing the fixtures.

I really didn’t want to do it, my hand and arm are still hurting quite a bit. The fixtures we replaced a week earlier, I tried to instruct my son and wife on how to do the job. I am sad to say that he ran off saying that it was impossible and I ended up doing at least half of the job. I decided that I didn’t need the aggravation of trying to get help. It was more pain than my arm.

I definitely won’t argue that the the old fixtures were dated. They were stamped 1999 and they had a Victorian brass look. They had already been updated once by replacing the globes from Victorian flowers to clear. Despite the fact that these new fixtures do look updated, every single one we have replaced has been a downgrade in light the fixtures put out.

My son’s fan went from four full sized lightbulbs to two small base bulbs. The sconces in the living room went from clear glass to shaded. An now the fixtures in our bedroom went from full size bulbs to small base bulbs. I guess that this is the only thing that bothers me is that fixtures are purchased by how they look and not by what they do. But, if this is the only problem then I will just put up with it.

At least a victory I can celebrate is that my wife agreed with me that it would be best to wait until the winter season to do the dry wall finishing from the rot repair and new window that was installed. I think that it is prudent not to spend a bunch of time repairing when I am not 100% confident that the leak is resolved.

I don’t know that I would call this a project but I recently purchased new wheels and tires for my pickup. I have needed new tires for quite a while. The problem was that the wheels were chrome coated and the chrome is what seals the inside of the tire. Over the years, that chrome has started to crack and therefore leak. It is very slow no doubt, about it but it causes the tires to be run on low pressure and wear the tires out prematurely.

I have had the local tire shop seal the inside of the wheel but they said that they have done all they can do. It is not an expense that I really wanted to make but this old pickup deserves some love. I have done very little in the 22 years I have owned it and things are starting to wear out. Now that my son will be gone in the fall, I plan on taking it out hunting this year as well. That is not to mention that I am also going to need it when I go get dirt for my fall season platers.

End Your Programming Routine: With summer ticking by at a breakneck pace, it is time to be buttoning things up as much as possible. There is still plenty to do for sure but if I gauge my progress I think that I am on track to get everything done. That is good because checking things off of my list makes me happy.

April 29, 2025 – He Who Smelt It, Didn’t Fix It

April 29, 2025 /

Bathroom fans are a dubious proposition. We want industrial hood suction with a consumer level price and engineering. I for one am somewhat skeptical on their effectiveness as it seems like fan off/on seem to have the same results. This particular fixture has always had weak lighting and now the fan has stopped working. It may be worth trying to diagnose but an upgrade in lighting is certainly in order.

I am amazed at the number of options today. When I was last looking at fans a couple of years ago there were a handful of choices. I didn’t buy one because the volume I wanted was on backorder. Those choices were largely based on fan volume. Today, there is a whole isle of bathroom fans. Later I learned that there was nothing wrong with the fan at all and what I thought was a bearing was a loose cover connection.

I have replaced this fan once before, so I am confident that this job is easier than it could be. If your fan is original to the house, your job is going to be much tougher as it is likely attached to the structure in a way that is not accessible from the finished space. This means that you will have to come up with a way to cut and chop your way through the fan body to get it removed.

I suspect that this fan overheated due to dust (or see below). The easiest fix would be to simply replace the fan motor. In our case, the light is so poor that we are going to upgrade the fixture. Replacing the motor is about an hour job, replacing the whole fan, box and all is probably an eight hour job including multiple days of finish work.

I did find out when I took the box out that a squirrel had made it’s way down the vent pipe and stashed a walnut in-between the flapper vent. For all I know, maybe that is what caused the fan to burn out. At the very least, this should help with heat loss and better ventilation for that matter.

Make sure the power is off. If you are confident that your wiring is conventional, then you should be able to leave it off at the switch. But, if you are not, then you will need to find the breaker. Next, remove the electrical connections. In this fan they are made underneath the plate that you see. That means that you will have to figure out how to disconnect the fan from the box. Detach the box from the framing so that it is only connected to the duct work. Finally, disconnect the duct and install in the reverse order.

Now is time for the pro tips. I did have to cut out my old fan box to remove it. I was not expecting that but it had to do with the wiring clamped outside the box. Second, I did have to modify the new fan. The first modification was that I cut the new work tabs off of the box so it would fit in the hole. The second modification I had to make was I had to disassemble the entire fan to make the electrical connections. There is no way to use a wire clamp (middle picture) when the box is in place. None of that is in the instructions. Finally, the new fan box is quite a bit smaller than the one that it replaced. That means that there is drywall repair to be done. I am still working on that as I type this.

End Your Programming Routine: I have to be honest, this job requires a lot of different skills such as electrical, HVAC and drywall finishing. If you could find someone to do the work at a fixed rate, you would probably time ahead unless you are pretty darn good. Since I had done this a number of times, I thought it would go quicker than it did. And even though I can handle it I found myself frustrated at points and sweating a lot.