The ceiling fan is completely installed and working great. It took a while – we had trouble getting the ceiling box attached to the joists, then I had to use two junction boxes to get the wire to reach (the existing wire that I was splicing into had zero slack, so when I wanted to splice the new wire onto it, I had to also splice a new piece of wire so that I had enough wire to strip and work with inside the junction boxes). At first, the fan didn’t work, but the light did, I thought I knew what the problem was, but it was 3am at this point, and I just wanted to go to bed. And if it was what I thought it was, it wasn’t going to start any fires overnight.

I woke up pretty early for having been asleep at 3:30am – 7am and I rewired the switch. The problem? I put the switch in as it had been previously – wire together the black “in” and white “out” and then put the white “in” and the black “out” on the switch. Well, I had wired the “red” (the fan positive) together, and it no longer had a full circuit, since up in the attic, it was spliced off the black, and the switch cut off the white. I had to wire together the whites, and put the blacks on the switch. (Which is how it’s supposed to be done, but that’s not how the previous electrician had done it).

So, now we have light in the bedroom, and it’s controlled by the switch. We have to use the pull chain for the fan, but that’s OK, I was trying not to cut out more drywall than I had to, and putting a double switch in would have required a rather large hole. I did have to cut a small hole in order to run the 14/3 wire to the switch, but it’s not that large, and it being patched over time (and I still have the paint I used to paint the room).

Yay!