Let it pour...

It's sprinkled a little this evening. At one point, the rain was pretty decent. But, I don't know how serious it is. Should I water, or will it pick back up overnight? I haven't seen rain in months, save one time we saw it out the office window but there was no trace of it by the time we went outside. I don't think it is currently raining, but this house is better insulated than the apartment was, so who knows? I do hear cars driving on wet pavement outside, so that's a good sign.

I feel really proud of myself. For some reason this morning, I looked at the coil of unused wire left over from my dishwasher project just about a year ago. And I stretched it out in the living room and it stretched all the way to the nursery. So I realized that this was in, in fact, enough wire to reach from the power outlets installed in the attic last March when the heater and air conditioner was installed. So I opened up the ceiling fan that we had purchased 14 months ago and laid all the pieces out and started looking over the instructions. It looked simple enough so I started some pre-assembly.

After Lori and the baby woke up, I measured the center of the living room. I drilled a small hole and pushed a garden stake up to see if there was any obstructions. Finding none other than insulation, I held up the mounting box, traced it, and then drilled lots of holes in the ceiling. Then I went out it with a hammer through the plastic and a box cutter through the drywall until I had a big enough opening. I put in a saf-t-brace and a saf-t-box, then I pushed up the wire until it was all looped in the attic and secured it to the box correctly with the pressure clamps. And then I proceeded to hang the ceiling fan. Heavy sucker, the box doesn't say how much, but I'd guess one of the heavier ceiling fans out there.

Part way through, I had to go to Home Depot because it didn't come with bulbs (cheap-os!) and then I came back, finished up assembly and then cut the power to the attic, climbed up and unscrewed the plate on the outlet. At that point, I became really thrilled with how the project was proceeding. The crew had used a plastic box and the outlet itself had open connections. I thought I was going to have to illegally tap into something in wirenuts, but instead, all I had to do was connect my wiring to the outlet. Screwed the panel back on, tacked down the new wiring -- as much as

(from home depot website)

I could reach, since the heater pretty much makes it impossible to get to most of the attic now. Climbed back down, went out and turned the power back on and came in to see the light on and the fan spinning. Success. All told, probably 3-1/2 hours from start to finish, plus 30 minutes of clean-up. Still need to clean some of my tools and put them away, as well as take out the trash, but the living room is back to normal and the fan looks and works great. I am really proud of the job I did.

The fan is a Mission-style five-blade fan with a Tiffany-style lighted base. It gives the entire room a warm golden glow.

Yep, I can hear the rain now and the littlest cat is going crazy running around trying to figure out what it is.