Abbey's Pretty Room Gets a Pretty New Fandelier
Fandelier? What the heck is that!? Remember early on when we shared how we quickly transformed Abbey's pretty pink girly bedroom right after we moved in? I told you back then the room was begging for a pretty chandelier but I wanted to live through a couple Iowa summers before losing the existing ceiling fan. It gets as hot as it does cold around here but Abbey's room seems to have the best air flow on the second floor, so we decided to look for something more glam and stumbled on a category of ceiling lighting I didn't know existed: the fandelier!
Her fan was actually cute, especially once we flipped the rainbow pastel blades around to only show white. But it didn't put off a lot of light for the size of her room. Ok, let's be honest, there wasn't anything wrong with it. But it wasn't sparkly and glam like I envisioned for this room. And once Abbey got a look at what I had in mind, she was all in.
What's a fandelier?
As I started looking around for pretty chandelier lights, I stumbled on something called a fandelier. Basically the look and style of a pretty light but with a hidden fan inside. Since I wasn't worried about losing the fan in here, I thought this was going to give us the best of both worlds, and allow for a little air movement in here if necessary but with a lot more style.
Abbey liked this pretty gold and "crystal" fixture best - what's not to like!?
A quick swap of the old fan for the new, and we'd be in business! Or so I thought...
Installation Issues
Not sure why this still surprises me, but I have yet to do an electrical project in this house that goes perfectly to plan. This project started off GREAT - it took me 5 whole minutes to get her old fan down after a flip of the breaker. Easy peasy!
But once I started working my way through the instructions of the new light, I quickly realized the original and existing ceiling fan box that perfectly fit in the ceiling drywall was too small for the new fan mounting bracket to be screwed into. By like a half inch. This unfortunately meant I couldn't do anything else until I could get to Home Depot to see if I could find a new, bigger mount and prayed the original wasn't a universal standard and I had bought a sparkly new light not meant for US ceiling fan boxes. I got the original out and had to put the project on hold. And Abbey had to use her desk lamp for a day.
I was excited to find a circular box slightly bigger than the original because I hoped that meant I could just cut a little bit more out of the ceiling to fit the new one in. I bought my very own drywall knife (which I learned is actually called a jab saw) and suited up for my first attempt to cut into drywall overhead.
It WORKED! After a quick pencil to trace the edge and a little bit of sawing, I made enough space for the new box. This may be one of my proudest moments yet because I did this all by assumption and didn't even fire up YouTube! WOOT! Giving myself another junior electrician badge. With a new bracket totally anchored, I was able to finish the job.
The Pretty New Fandelier
Even though the installation instructions required a little bit of reading between the lines to figure out just exactly how to piece this together before hanging, it was a pretty quick install once everything was assembled. And I must say ... this is literally one of the prettiest lights I've ever seen!
The photos really don't do their sparkle justice. Abbey is one happy girl and thinks it's just the most fabulous new light.
It holds four candelabra lights that create a beautiful glow in the room, bouncing off the crystals in all directions.
All lit up, it doesn't even look real in this photo. Even Zach keeps commenting about how pretty the light is!
It's beautiful - but not as beautiful as the girl I installed it for. Just love making this space something she is proud of. And showing her with a little intuition and a lot of drive, girls can do anything they put their mind to.
Need a fandelier fix? Here's what we used:
18" Golden Crystal Fandelier Wayfair
Ceiling Fan Mounting Box Home Depot
Stanley Jab Saw with Wood Handle Home Depot
