DIY: New (to me!) Ceiling Fan in the Kitchen

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As always, I feel like I have to tell you: I am NOT an electrician. If you do not feel comfortable working with electricity – DON’T. If you do, turn off the electricity at the breaker box for the room you are working with and test the area with a voltmeter before you begin. Safety people! It will keep you alive.

Remember when I told you that my kitchen was the temperature of the sun? Every single time I turn on my new oven lately it immediately becomes as hot as a crematorium in my kitchen. When I was little, one of my grandmother’s cooked on a wood stove. Have you ever been around a cooking wood stove? It was absolutely unbearable in the summer – without air conditioning. Can you even imagine? I honestly don’t know how she just didn’t die from the heat. My family would have starved. Or they would have eaten nothing but watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers until October.

Anyway, that’s what my kitchen reminds me of right now. Never mind that I have central air that cools my house to whatever digital temperature I want to set it on. In case you are wondering – I CANNOT STAND TO BE HOT. Sorry for the yelling. One of the reasons and they are many, is that my face doesn’t sweat. Isn’t that weird? Denton and I worked out in the yard last weekend and I thought that my head was just going to crack open.

Sweating is one of our bodies ways of releasing heat, just in case you came here to get a health lesson, and when your face and head do not sweat, all of that heat has nowhere to go. Which makes Tracie a very crabby person. Soooooo, now that I’ve had my squirrel moment…….Let’s get on to the DIY!

I found this little beauty at my local goodwill. I have to tell you that I balked at the $20.00 price tag.

Yes, yes, I know that you think I’m cheap. But, as I tell Denton all of my actions have reasons behind them. Those reasons may or may not be relevant to him or you, but still. When we bought this house we spent almost $1,000.00 to upgrade all of the lighting in it. Our house is almost 3,000 square feet and that’s a lot of light fixtures.

In the first year alone, we replaced the living room ceiling fan THREE times. These were not yard sale fixtures people. They were all brand new from Lowe’s. So I decided that I would not buy another new ceiling fan after I found a 52 inch Hunter ceiling fan at a yard sale for $10.00. It’s still in my living room whirling away, NINE years later.

The first thing I did was remove everything from the box and take out all of the things that I knew I wouldn’t need. Although it’s pretty, I don’t need this cover because I am using the light fixture that came with the fan. I also didn’t need the drop bar. I removed the old fixture, which entailed unscrewing one screw in the middle. Admire my manicure skills, while you are here! Actually, I never paint my fingernails, my toenails yes, but not my fingernails. Liva and I were testing colors and my thumbnail was conveniently right there.

Remove the wiring nuts and unhook the wires from one another……

Hold up the new mounting hardware and realize that you are going to have to remove the old one first so that the new one will stay up on the ceiling……

Tada! And this is the point that I forgot all about you guys! I’ll try to walk you through the rest of what I did. On each side of the mounting hardware there are two smiling faces – see them? Two round holes with a rectangular hole beside it, on each side? Those are the slots for the ceiling fan motor and light kit to hang from. You slide them, carefully into those slots and then you can wire everything without having to hold the whole shebang in the air the whole time. Genius.

Once you’ve wired everything together correctly – white with white wires and black with black wires – slide the cover over it all, use the screws to attach the cover to the motor, make sure everything is secure, attach the fan blades with your handy dandy screws and you are done!

This has been one of my most helpful DIYs to date. It has already made a difference in how hot or cool it is in my kitchen. I highly recommend it. It may not be haute couture in the world of light fixtures, but it is keeping the levels of heat down to something that is bearable!One thing I will have to add is a longer pull chain for the light fixture. Liv cannot reach this one. Another detriment to being a flat five feet tall, but it’s easily remedied.