Misty

Well, I do believe Mrs and I finished a project in record time. I wanted the bathroom - my bathroom - put back together and functional by Sunday night. We were done by 6:30 pm or so. Only thing left to do is paint the trim, but we will wait to do that. We have another painting project coming up very soon and that will require trim painting as well. We also are going to replace the curtain, so what is in the picture is temporary.

So, Misty turned out to be more light blue than it is gray, but it works. It came out very nice and goes well with the existing chrome/white fixtures. I did not want to completely overhaul the bathroom again but we did change a couple things out including the toilet seat/lid which we replaced with one of those nifty, slow-closing jobs. Also a new shower head, and flapper in the toilet which will cut down even more on the per flush water usage. Left to be changed out are some of the trim on the shower valve and a new metal water supply line for the toilet. The white one on there now is rather scuzzy.

We were going to change out the exhaust fan as well. For years, and I do mean YEARS - the fan has not sucked air out. We gutted this bathroom some time ago down to the sticks and replaced everything including the fan which we thought was a good model with good air exchange, but it never really seemed to work well.

We purchased one at Home Depot the other night and planned to swap out the old one entirely. Then Mrs went to some real electrical stores and found a rip-roaring big one with a lot of air suck and the bonus of being quiet. Having had a weird experience there she went to another store and purchased yet another fan (#3). She also picked up a new duct and proper vent hood specially designed for a soffit and is the same as what our electrician used in the addition bathroom. For years we just had a makeshift vent cut into the soffit which I never really trusted.

I started painting on Saturday and finished the ceiling with two coats in no time including drying time in between coats and one coat of Misty on the walls. This morning Mrs completed the walls and cut in the color beautifully. I went into the attic to rip out the old fan. Removing this would show us how much ceiling we would have to remove to put in the new and larger fan. Not something I was looking forward to.

I found removing the old fan would be a difficult task. When the electrician installed the fan, he secured it with screws, which is proper, but did so before the sheet rock was up which allowed him to screw them in from below. This proved a problem for me as the screws went in at an angle that I could not get on with a screw driver from above.... Hmmmmm.....

I started looking closer at the old fan. It's not that old, so why is it not working? On the side of the housing is a plastic piece of equipment called a damper/duct connector. Inside this is a little door that swings open when the fan is turned on allowing the hot, steamy shower air to vent outside and, when off, it closes, presumably to keep cold air out as well as wasps and other bugs. I removed it from the housing and poked the little door inside. It was difficult to open. In fact it was pretty well gunked up. Could this be our issue? Something this simple? I replaced it and noticed that the little plastic nub that holds the door in place and allows it to open and close was pressed hard against the ceiling joist to which the fan is attached. This slight distortion caused the door to stay in place. Closed! Mrs took the piece to the sink and washed it thoroughly and I made the smallest modification possible to the joist without compromising it's stregth which allowed the connector to reside happily in place, unobstructed. A few tests of the fan and we had solved the problem and saved a good chunk of change in the process.

I installed the duct and new vent hood in the soffit and connected the duct to the duct connector and it functions like new. Turns out the fan is one of the most powerful and quietest models out there, and we were about to replace it with something with less power.

So, on to the next project.

Also, it was 15 degrees F when I got up this morning and all of my little greens in the cold frame survived the night! I can almost taste them now.