Hey everyone, Dan here from the MoCo Eats blog. I don’t know if Tofuball has ever had this problem before, but I have personally found that sometimes your home improvement projects just don’t want to go exactly as planned. From the experience I had last night you might never want to take my advice on any how-to projects again, but trust me when I say this is NOT normal for me.
The mission was simple: install a reinforced ceiling fan electrical box in my bedroom ceiling, run a wire to it, and then connect that wire to a wall switch. Sounds simple right? Well as I’m about to explain, the "simple" tasks aren’t always as easy as they should be.
The Planning Process…
My entire attic is filled with blown-in fiberglass insulation so I knew I would have to suit-up as much as possible to avoid itching for the rest of my life. My brilliant idea was to purchase a full body tyvek suit which would keep the fiberglass off my skin, and it worked great . . . Except it also kept out air and kept IN sweat! If you've ever been in an attic in the middle of summer, you know how terrible that is! So, picture this, I am suited up like a HAZMAT cleanup worker, crawling army style through a tiny little opening in the mounds of fiberglass. At this point I realized that the beams there were only 8 inches apart and the reinforced ceiling box is 16 inches wide. Unfortunately the brace has to span across the beams so it can hold the maximum amount of weight, but since the beams are so close together this setup is now impossible. I retreat for now, I must come up with a new attack plan.
Once I reach the temperatures downstairs I tend to take my time planning my next strategy because the attic is so hot. Yesterday it was hovering around 90 degrees, but last week I put a thermometer up there and it read 113.4 degrees. So bottom line, if you want to lose weight this is a PERFECT opportunity! Put on that Tyvek suit and get to work. After a few short minutes you’ve magically lost 10 lbs!
At this point I have confirmed that the electrical box I have won’t work, so I have to find an alternative. I could put a wooden brace above that one and nail it into the beams, but that would involve two trips into the attic, climb up to measure, come down to cut, and return to nail it in place. That alone was reason enough to rule it out. So my idea was to find a box that has a metal brace on the side that can be screwed into the stud on one side only. I don’t recommend this method to anyone else as it’s not quite as strong as the full length braced box. But for my particular situation it should suffice.
The Installation…
So I climbed into the attic and held the box in place long enough to trace it with a pencil. Then I moved the box out of the way and cut the hole with a drywall saw. All I had to do after that was put the box in place, call for my lovely wife to help me get the height right so it’s flush with the drywall, and drive in the screws. After yelling for several minutes I realized she was in the basement and so I just waited patiently as 5lbs magically burned from my body. Eventually she came and I was able to get everything fastened properly and get the heck out of that part of the attic permanently!
Installing the Wire in the Wall…
All I have to do now to finish the job is run the wire down the wall and hook it into the switchbox. This part is super easy, just drill the hole, drop the wire and pull it into the box. Well not so fast, this too can be complicated! I measured the distance from the walls so I could drill in the right place and I marked the location. Have you ever started drilling into an enclosed wall when suddenly light appears through the very hole you’re drilling? Well I have! The distance from the trim to the wall is different in the attic and my measurements were about one inch off. So lucky me, I drilled right into the bathroom ceiling. True this is easily fixed with a bit of drywall mud, but the hole just so happened to be directly above my wife’s and my own brand new toothbrushes. Literally we had used them twice.
The Final Hookup…
Finally with my wife’s help we were able to get the wire into the electrical box and are ready to do the final hookup and install the fan. I wasn’t able to get that done last night, but I’m sure hoping the next parts of the install will be easier than the last. As a final kick in the gut, when I went to put the screw back in the switchbox I made the unfortunate realization that I had left my best screwdriver somewhere in the depths of the second attic… maybe someone else will find it in 50 years or so.
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