Twin Ceiling Fans

If you like ceiling fans, give me a chance, just hear me out. They were everywhere – 6 fans total in a 7 room house. That’s a little too much ceiling fannage for me, a girl who only bothers to use a fan the middle week of August. The ones that came with the house were very dated; one was a child’s rainbow-theme, the downstairs ones were a little discolored (maybe the previous owners were smokers?), they were rarely installed well (downright scary), or were not close-to-ceiling when they really could have been.

Oh, and each and every one had unfortunate detailing that would have been better left off. For example, they all had those dangling spotlights, which happened to make already small rooms even smaller. I prefer much simpler, close to ceiling fans if I have to have them.

All in all, I removed four ceiling fans, replacing two with new (matching) fans, and replaced two with non-fan fixtures.

Starting in the living room, the fan was replaced with this Crate and Barrel Chandelier:

And the dining room fan was swapped for IKEA 365+ pendants (a ceiling fan directly over my dining table seemed strange):

The kitchen fan (below) and baby-sized fan in the 3rd bedroom (even further below) were neutral enough to stay; but they were the only survivors.

I did make the decision to keep the ceiling fans in the upstairs bedrooms from a resale perspective; even though they aren’t needed often, the house doesn’t have air conditioning and I figured I’d be doing someone (and my not-adjusted-to-no-AC house guests) a disservice not to have standardized air circulation. People love their fans, what can I say.

The master bedroom and guest room fans were particularly bad; the overly ornate + rainbow varieties needed to go. If it had been as easy as swapping out all of the bad fans for simple 5-blade, no light fixtures, I would have been a happy girl, but both bedrooms really needed that ceiling light (mostly because I still don’t own floor or table lighting… yet… eesh).

Understandably, some of you aren’t going to be as picky as me, but I searched long and hard for fans that were neutral, with lights, close-to-ceiling, and in my price range. When I found one that I liked, I bought two, and luckily for me they were marked down to $24 each, which is practically nothing if you’re familiar with how damn expensive ceiling fans can be. It ended up being considerably below my budget to buy them both at the same time, and I was able to guarantee nice matching fixtures in the upstairs rooms. Hurray for consistency.

Installation of ceiling fans is slightly more annoying than removing them because while you can just remove the fixture in one full piece, to install properly and take proper considerations to balancing the unit, you have to affix the blades once the motor is installed. It’s a little bit like doing acrobatics on a step ladder, but we made do so you probably can too. Here’s the new master bedroom fan:

And it’s identical twin, the guest bedroom fan.

If you’re curious, they’re made by Harbor Breeze and I bought them right at Lowe’s. The light hung down a little further than I would have preferred, but the fan fits really nicely against the ceiling and most importantly, I barely notice it anymore. Blends in nicely, and runs really quietly.