Disco Fever

It spins around, the lights flash with a rhythmic beat. What's not to love?

Oh right, it's a ceiling fan, not a disco ball. The light probably shouldn't be flickering like crazy.

I removed the LED module (as you can observe, it's missing in the above picture), and gave it a quick inspection to determine if any parts were user serviceable.

Fuse checked out, TVS checked out, bridge rectifier checked out, 4 resistors checked out, zener checked out (as far as I could tell, at least). That left the driver chip as the weak link, and at that point it wasn't really worth diagnosing any further.

A new module would cost something like $45 and given how these things go, had no guarantee of actually fitting. Since having a ceiling fan in the middle of... you know, I'm not even sure what to call the space, but I mostly just use it as a hallway. Anyway, since having a ceiling fan there makes basically no sense, I decided to take the easy way out and just replace it with a flush mount ceiling fixture. A fixture which, for the record, cost $10 less than the replacement module.

But first, we must rid ourselves of the ceiling fan.

Oh that's a good sign. Why do things right when half-assing it takes just as long and yields inferior results? Something tells me that the box isn't fan rated, either.

Anyway, the wood chunks went in the trash along with the ceiling fan, and the new light mounted up quite easily in its place.

Looks just like the one I installed in place of the chandelier I kept bashing my head on.

Next on the list was to get rid of the caddy that held the remote for the ceiling fan, which I used somewhere close to zero times since moving in here.

Threading the screw back into the drywall anchor, just far enough for it to grab but not so far that it spreads out to grip the drywall, gives you a great way to lever the anchor out of the wall without doing a lot of damage to the wall or your sanity.

Just need to spackle up these holes and apply some color matched paint.

I didn't use the hot mud on this one, because I couldn't be bothered to mix some up and I still have some premix kicking around that hasn't quite solidified yet. A little splash of water loosens it up nicely.

If you know what to look for you can spot the dimples that don't look quite like the rest of the wall texture (I purposely left them sunken a little so as not to make an obvious flat spot), but at a glance they don't stand out at all, and you'd never notice anything amiss.