Hole in Three!

During the winter it’s too cold. During the summer it’s too hot. You know what I’m talking about. Every house has one: that one room that just can’t seem to get the temperature right. Maybe it’s upstairs or in the back corner of the house. Whatever the reason, it is just always uncomfortable. In my house, it’s my daughters’ room.

With summer fast approaching, I thought I would take the matter into my own hands and install a ceiling fan so the girls can sleep beneath a cool breeze as the mercury stretches vertically.

It sounded like an easy step-by-step project. Sometimes, however, the steps on paper don’t always line up with the steps of reality. Here’s how it happened.

Step 1: Climb up in the attic and cut a small hole in the ceiling. Sounds easy enough, right? I began the project by fetching the ladder from the garage and setting it up in hallway where the attic access panel is located. Stepping onto the ladder, I ascended as gracefully as a saint being called to heaven. Once in the attic, I shined my light toward the destination at the opposite end of the house and began traversing the beams and trusses, alternating between a belly crawl and a monkey climb. About halfway along on my journey, I started to get nervous, for it appeared that a wall was looming in the distance - a wall that shouldn’t have been there. “Wait a minute,” I said to myself. So I did just that. I sat for one minute and then proceeded closer to the wall. I touched it. Sure enough. It was a wall. How could I access the attic above the bedroom if there was a wall in the way? I began to wonder. Then I recalled the neighbor who had the same issue a few years back. He had to cut a new hole in the ceiling on the other end of the house in order to get above the bedrooms. So I slithered, crawled, and swung myself back to the the ladder and dropped back to ground level.

Step 1A: Cut an even bigger hole in the ceiling so you can climb up in the attic and cut a small hole in the ceiling as per Step 1. Easy enough. With the ladder repositioned in the hall at the other end of the house, I stared upwards. “How big should I make the hole?” I asked myself. A moment later, the answer came to me very clearly: No bigger than what you can patch with the only scrap of drywall you have in the garage. Back out to the garage to measure the drywall. Once that was done, I managed to draw a very nice rectangular box on the ceiling. Moments later, with my power saw inverted on my head, I commenced a cutting maneuver that was probably ill-advised. Nevertheless, I managed to keep my head intact and remove the drywall. Unfortunately, there was a rafter right in the middle of my access hole. It would have to go. Given the tight quarters, the power saw was out. This one would have to be done the old fashioned way: by hand. Given the tight quarters, there was no way to do it with my right hand, only a lefty could get the best angle on the saw. Twenty minutes later, the last chip of the two-by-four finally gave way to my unrelenting hand-saw. “Ahh, access,” I said rubbing my numb left arm.

Back to Step 1: Climb up in the attic and cut a small hole in the ceiling. To begin this step, I poked my head up into the attic like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. This time I could actually see my destination which meant summer was coming. (OK, so I left out one small detail. Earlier I had poked a wire coat hanger up through the ceiling so I would know where to go once I got into the attic.) With my compact rotary tool in hand, I successfully put a small three inch square hole where none had ever existed before. Step 1 was done!

Step 1B: Climb out of the attic, look up at the large hole in the ceiling and find a way to cover it up so that it can be reused for future attic access, while protecting the look and comfort of your home. Sounds easy enough. Drive down to The Home Depot and buy some wooden molding to frame the hole, then drop the drywall cover into place. A quick measurement of the hole told me that ten feet of molding would do the trick. An hour later, I was back on the job and the wood was ready to cut. My dad always told me to measure twice and cut once. He never said anything about which direction to hold the asymmetrical molding when cutting a 45 degree angle so that it would make a perfect 90 degree corner. Now that you know that he never told me that, you might understand why I should have gotten 11 feet instead of ten. My trim work actually turned out quite nice, and unless you look really close, you’d never even notice that I was a foot short on one side. Now all I had left to do was to drop the piece of drywall into the mostly-finished frame and move on to Step 2. Unfortunately, Step 2 would have to wait. You see, when I returned to the garage to fetch my only piece of remaining drywall, I neglected to realize that I had leaned it up against a cupboard door. Ironically, this was the same cupboard door that I was about to open. Too late. Seconds later, my drywall was laying on the floor, snapped in two.

Step 1C: Repair the broken drywall. I refused to make another trip to The Depot. An hour later the drywall was reinforced and good as new.

Step 2 (Finally!): Climb back in the attic and run some wire to the small hole that was created back in Step 1. (Not to be confused with the large hole that was created in Step 1A.)

Step 3: Find a wire that hurts when you lick it. Chances are that’s a hot one. Attach the hot wire to the wire leading down to the hole that was created in Step 1.

Step 4: Remain in attic and install ceiling fan bracket.

Step 4B: Spend up to thirty minutes trying to remove a nut from a stripped out bolt on the bracket so that you can replace the bolt and tighten it up again so that the ceiling fan won’t wobble once it is suspended from the bracket. (Step 4B Option: Avoiding stripping out bolts and skip to Step 5)

Step 5: Install the ceiling fan.

Step 5A: Go back to Home Depot for a third time and pick out the fan you want, make the purchase, return home and continue with Step 5.