Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Ceiling fans and light fixtures

Most homeowners want to add ceiling fans if they don't have them, but I'm getting rid of mine.

The ones that are in my house, installed by the previous owner, are simply attached to the eighty-year-old lath and plaster ceilings. There are no mounts or supports connecting them to the joists. Adding supports would be a huge job.

Ms. HRP retextured one of my ceilings just a few months ago, and it already has hairline cracks which I believe are caused by the weight of the ceiling fan.

Moreover, I never use the fans. The one that caused the cracks has not been turned on in the eight or nine years I've lived here. I prefer floor or table fans, and I have three of those.

Plus, the ones that are in here are all-white budget models, and they're frankly tacky-looking.

So I'm taking out all but the one in the den (which I installed myself years ago) and replacing them with ordinary flush-mount light fixtures.

I bought what looked like a pretty nice mission-style fixture over the Internet last week. It arrived today, and what a disappointment it has turned out to be. The fixture is a knockoff of a competitor's much more expensive version, and seeing it up close, it's obvious where corners were cut to bring the price down. Some of the metal parts are the thickness of colored craft paper, and bowed out slightly because they weren't fit together carefully by the maker.

Maybe it will look okay once it's installed, but if it doesn't, I may give it to someone else and buy the crazy expensive one that's the original product.

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