One of my major tasks for this summer was to buy & install (or rather, have installed) ceiling fans for my house. And as of today, this has been accomplished!
I talked with someone at the contractor desk at Menards and he recommended John Borcher for the ceiling fan install. A few calls with Mr. Borcher and we were set. He arrived this morning (before 8:30am) with Cliff and with his grand-nephew. The nephew is between 7th & 8th grade and enjoyed the toys in my house, but he also helped out the gentlemen from time to time (and got a bit of ribbing from them too when he was distracted by the interesting things in my house).
They did a nice job getting the fans up. The Hunter had tons of pieces, and getting the remote into the Brigham made that process longer than necessary (and a wire that unhooked that was unnoticed until the fan was completely up – that was an issue too). But they were gone before 1:30pm and I had fans in my house – woo! Cost for installing 4 fans? $260. Total cost for my house upgrade, less than $600! Nifty!
There is a drawback to my new fans which I hadn’t even considered, however. The poor kitties spent the morning under the bed thanks to the strangers in their house (though Lucy popped out twice) and now refuse to come out because OMG!!!! There are Monsters on the ceiling!!!!!!!!
Poor Lucy has been out twice since the fans were up and all she does is run through the house looking above with this look of sheer terror on her face. (Yes, I’m anthropomorphizing here…) Linus won’t even get out enough to see the new Ceiling Monsters. *sigh*
I do hope the kitties realize these new additions to their house are not monsters but instead will help keep us cool in the summer (and maybe reduce our cooling bill). I especially hope they realize this before they die of thirst or poop/pee under the bed. (I’ve at least gotten food to them and I think they finally ate some of it.) Maybe tonight in the dark it won’t seem as scary to them.
I love this! Being in Dallas where the fans run 24/7 all year long (even in the winter), I hadn’t thought about how a pet would react to such a scary new monster. Too funny!
Tom put up the ceiling fan in my kitchen. He put up the first one back in ’91 when I bought the house. Then, when the original fan (a Hunter) died around 2009, he put up the new one (with my assistance in both cases). I don’t know if I’ve told you the story of the ceiling fan in one of my rental houses. When I bought the place, there was an exceedingly ugly fan in the living room (rusty, broken shades, hanging at an angle). I knew I had to replace it, but decided a non-fan fixture would look better in a living room, so I bought a nice flush ceiling fixture. In the course of installing it, we found that the junction box wasn’t wired to a switch (the old fan turned on and off with a string hanging down), so I had to hire an electrician for an additional $250 to wire in a switch (which required cutting a hole in the dry wall to get the wires to the right place). But in the end, I had a nice, quietly elegant fixture on my living room ceiling. When I got the house rented, the first thing the new tenants wanted was a ceiling fan in the living room. So they took down my fixture and replaced it with a fan.
Poor traumatised kitties. 🙁
I have two cats, who’re sisters. I have two ceiling fans. Amanda is not bothered by either fan. Beatrice is not bothered by the fan in my great room (which has dark brown blades that are relatively long compared to width against a white ceiling) but she, like Linus and Lucy, is terrified of the fan on the back porch (which is white against a white ceiling, and has shorter, broader blades). It could just be that she’s not out on the porch as often, so the fan hasn’t become part of her “background noise” the way the great room fan has, or maybe it’s that the ceiling on the back porch is lower, so the fan is closer, and thus, she can see it more clearly, or the silhouette of the blades on the white fan trigger an instinctive reaction of “swooping hawk! Hide!” … or it could be a combination of all three… Anyway, I hope your fans become “background noise” for your kitties very soon.
Aw, poor kitties! I too hope they adjust soon. None of my cats have had any problems with our ceiling fans; Beezer grew up with them in the Old House, but I know Sophie’s never been around them, but she doesn’t take any notice of them, just like MOT. Of course it might just be that my bedroom is so crowded with stuff that it’s sensory overload for them anyway… 😉