Amateur electrician (half-)hour

A few days ago, my late-night reading session was disturbed by a very large, very loud Musca domestica flitting around the ceiling fan, determined to push its face all the way through the frosted glass of my new LED bulb to feast on its tasty electronic innards.

Bzzzzzzzzzz

Determined to take matters into my own hands, I grabbed a nearby handkerchief and began flailing wildly at the intruder. A few things happened at once:

1. The fly escaped between the spinning blades of my ceiling fan (really);
2. The handkerchief wrapped itself around the weighted end of the light's pull-chain;
3. The light went out with a crack (and I put up a blackout curtain at night, so it was very dark);
4. Something whizzed by my arm and crashed into the ground.

After groping my way to my desk lamp and turning it on, I discovered that I'd managed to yank the light's pull chain out of the ceiling.

Handkerchief Power. Not a big loss – I kept
confusing this with the fan chain anyway!

I didn't want to write off the overhead light fixture because then I'd have to unscrew the fancy LED bulb and figure out something else to do with it, like sticking it into a lamp precariously balanced on the radiator. Instead, I decided to crack open the ceiling fan assembly to see if I could somehow fix the chain.

Things sure are looking dim.

Not even cracked.

As far as I can tell, the pull-chain previously ran through the threaded plastic at the bottom and somehow wound around the inside of the plastic casing. I spent a couple minutes poking the switch with a screwdriver: if I couldn't fix this switch, I'd have to take the fan apart to replace it, which I really wasn't looking forward to doing.

But then, inspiration struck: why not cut the switch out of the circuit and ditch the pull-chain entirely? Just use the wall switch for the light, the second pull-chain for the fan: simplicity itself! No confusing frills!

Time to pull out the tools of the trade: wire cutters and electrical tape.

Never leave home without 'em.

A few hair-raising (not really), wire-stripping minutes later:

"I turned off the power, right?" ...

...what could possibly go wrong? ...

...nothing, apparently?! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So now I have a working light again, but with 33% fewer fiddly screws and no switch/pull-chain assembly to confuse me while trying to turn on the fan, and the housefly even got away! That's what I call win-win-win!

"Thanks for helping simplify my life, I guess!"
"No problem, friend!"

To wrap up, today's lessons:

1. Big loud houseflies are undeterred by fan blades
2. Casablanca Fan Company light fixture + fan assemblies are overbuilt
3. I lack a healthy fear of electrical wiring