Updated White Ceiling Fan: Guest

Chelsea & Tom @ The Fresh Fossil replaced an old squeaky ceiling fan for a new one found at a garage sale.


If you've seen photos of our living room, you might have noticed an ancient monstrosity looming up on the ceiling.

Yup, I'm talking about the ceiling fan.

When we first moved in, this ceiling fan was the least of our worries. It was actually much better than most other things in the house that bothered us - namely, the front door, the kitchen carpet and nasty cabinets, knotty pine wainscotting in the basement,the buried patio, etc (I could go on and on here, hah!). But now that we've gotten pretty far along in our remodeling of the house (roughly half the house is near completion!) the old fan stuck out like a sore thumb.

An old thumb that makes noise, that is.

Yup, that old baby would create a nice high-pitched whine whenever it was turned on, and we'd be lucky if the blades started spinning automatically - usually we'd end up giving it a little "boost" (which involved one of us perched precariously on top of the sofa arm). The use of the fan was not very convenient, not very safe, and it was pretty darn annoying even when the thing was turned on and actually working!

And then, surprise surprise, a couple of months ago the fan stopped working altogether.

Needless to say, we weren't very upset to see it die.

Tom's parents were changing out their ceiling fixtures and graciously offered us their old ceiling fan. How could we say no?

So, armed once again with my trusty can of white spray paint primer (yes, I've learned my lesson!), I went to work on it:

After a couple of coats of white spray paint, that old fan was looking pretty nice!

But --

Then we were out perusing some garage sales one day, and found a $100+ brand new white fan -- for 8 dollars.

With a light. And a remote (!!!).

While we were overjoyed at our sweet find, we were also a little worried about buying an item with so many electrical parts  at a garage sale. While the sellers claimed it was new and never even took it out of the box, you can never be too careful. But for 8$, we decided to take the risk and quickly snatched that baby up!

We installed the new fan (thanks to Tom and the help of our friend and the Best Man at our wedding, Clyde) on an 18" downrod to achieve the optimal fan height for maximum air flow in the room (the best fan blade height for 2-story rooms is in the 7-9 ft. range). 

And we are totally digging the remote, which we were overjoyed to find an older-electrical adapter inside which configures the 30+ year-old-electric-work to actually function with a remote.

Score.

So no more precarious perching atop the sofa arms to adjust the fan for us, thanks, and we are more than happy to say goodbye to the high-pitched whine from the old motor, as well. Thanks so much to Tom's parents who graciously gifted us their old fan - we really do appreciate it, but I guess luck and maybe fate had something else in store for us (like a remote-controlled fan for 8 bucks!).

So what about you guys? Are there any projects you've started before you got lucky and found something even better? Any projects that you finished and then realized something else you could have used/done instead? Anyone out there score any fantastic deals lately at garage sales? Let's talk about our fantastic finds!

I can appreciate a good ceiling fan and a remote controlled one is even better.  What a great price!

How do you like their new fan?