Out with the Old, in with the Schoolhouse

I've mentioned my despise for our ceiling fan many times. It. killed. me. Literally, the sight of it physically pained me. And, I had to face it so many times a day.  You can see our ceiling fan from almost every room in our house.

You see it immediately when you walk in the front door.
(Talk about bad first impressions).

And first thing in the morning when you walk upstairs to grab a cup of coffee.

(…And no, we absolutely have not finished painting our ceiling. We stopped where the kitchen begins, just as I'm sure any professional home builder would. It's on my short list of projects to get done. And yes, we still have that ugly front door with no molding. We have issues, I'm completely aware). You see it from the living room, dining room, and kitchen. This brassy beast was staring at me everyday, several times a day and I developed a passionate dislike for it. 

Ceiling fans can't be that big of an expense, why not just replace it immediately when we moved in? That was my common train of thought before I was a homeowner. "It can't cost that much to change that out, just buy a new one". But then I realized that you had to prioritize. A pretty fan whirring over wall to wall blue carpeting wouldn't really help our home, so it got bumped down on our to do list.

But now, it's at the top.

You WOULD NOT believe how much time I spent shopping for a new ceiling fan. I'm sure I could have learned French in the same amount of time that I spent looking for just the right option.  And maybe located flight 370.  Because again, it's only a ceiling fan, but because you see it from so many vantage points in our house,  the upgrade had to be good.

I identified this fan early on in my hunt as my favorite.

It's the Schoolhouse Ceiling Fan from the Period Arts Light Company, and I found that Lumens had the best price on it (after several months of online stalking, I found that this brand never goes on sale). I liked it for its clean lines, simplicity, and schoolhouse fixture. But it was certainly an expensive choice. You can find ceiling fans at big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's for under $100.00, but after scouring loads of sites for a more affordable option, I always came back to this one. If this was going to be so visible in our house, it was okay to spend a little more money on it, right?

 I had concerns about it for our home though. Was the light too large? Could I really handle another wood tone in our house? To add to that, I couldn't find a sample image of it in a home, anywhere. Would it be proportional to our space? I found some other options that I was attracted to, but they all came at similar price points, some even more expensive. My favorite retailer of ceiling fans turned out to be Restoration Hardware. Here's the round up that I put together of the best options I found on the market.

(1) $499.00 (2) $349.00 (3) $319.00 (4) $179.00 (5) $499.00 (6) $329.00 (7) $319.00 (8) $384.00

After over thinking this decision for far too long,  I was exhausted of ceiling fan shopping, so I decided to just freak'n purchase it already.  I decided to order mine with black blades, as opposed to the maple shown above. The problem was, I had no idea how it actually looked with black blades (it is always shown retailing with the maple blades). So I was taking a leap of ceiling fan faith, ordering an expensive item (that would be expensive to ship back), without actually knowing how it would look in all black.

Oh, and Jon was opposed to the black blades. But I went ahead and did it anyways (without telling him, mind you). The reason being,  I could not wrap my head around having yet another tone of wood in our house. I. just. couldn't. do. it. That was the same reason that I couldn't get on board with most of the options above. The other reason being some of their price tags.

Anyways, this is all the long way of saying that we finally FINALLY switched out our ceiling fan.

Now, this was almost an "I messed up post," as I didn't love it when I first saw it in our house. It was certainly an upgrade, but was it worth the money? Before purchasing, one of my fears had been that with all of the black, it would seem like a spider was a clinging to our ceiling and spinning overhead. When I first saw it, my suspicions seamed valid. 

And Jon and I both agreed that yes, the schoolhouse light was too large. 

BUT, after several days, I warmed to it. Jon likes it, and he loves it for the amount of light it puts off (this thing can light up our whole main living floor, but not obnoxiously so). And we love that it is on only a 12"rod, as opposed to our previous fan, which was on a 24" rod. Having the fan so much closer to the ceiling really opens up our entrance. So my takeaway advise for you: if you're replacing a fan, consider hanging it high, on a shorter rod, to help bring your eyes up. 

And of course, if you're in need of an old ceiling fan, let us know. Otherwise the first taker on craigslist gets it (I really hope there's a taker, because I hate creating waste, and my brass beauty is taking up space in the garage.).