Old houses are crazy!

But first a refresher: My house is 100+ years old. This DIY stuff you find in a 100+ year old home can be the stuff of legends. I’m pretty sure my house was built before indoor plumbing, HVAC, “modern” electricity, etc. So taking that into consideration the after market upgrades have been excellent (not like most houses around here).

For story time purposes: this is what a shower fan looks like. I’ve never actually seen the guts of a shower fan before & I’ve never really thought about a shower fan. Just one of those everyday, 1st world things, one doesn’t really think about… Until you have to.

There’s a housing unit that goes into the ceiling with all the electricity stuff, then the fan, & then a plug for the fan so you don’t electrocute yourself. It’s a basic shower fan. Nothing too fancy.

Anyways, when I moved in my shower fan has always been really loud. I always figured it was loose & tightened the screws every once in awhile. That would work for a bit until the screws loosened up, then I would tighten them. Ad finitum.

Until today. Tomorrow I have resurfacers coming in to resurface the tub & shower area. Since that was going on I figured I might as well take out & replace the fan.

So, the 2 screws come out with some difficulty but that doesn’t really worry me; it’s a shower, they’re probably rusted or something.

Then there’s this nub in the middle. I can’t really see it but my drill doesn’t fit & I’m like, “that can’t be a bolt. It doesn’t make sense”. I shine my flashlight & it definitely looks like a bolt & a weird kind of plastic nut I’ve never seen before.

So I’m like, “welp, I hope I don’t pull the whole ceiling down on me”, grab the unit & pull down. The unit pulls down pretty easily & it kinda looks like a normal shower fan, & I unplug it.

The housing unit is still in the ceiling but nothing else about the unit looks normal.

I take a closer look. Someone bolted a fan from a newer unit to a fan grate & then installed it in the old housing unit.

It also looks like the bolt was too long, then probably glued that weird plastic nut on it, & cut off the over hang.

I get it. Noone wants to electrocute themselves & they probably did this WAY BEFORE youtube was a thing, but they probably spent more time & effort in rebuilding this special shower fan instead of just properly replacing the entire housing unit anyways 😂😂😂. Like, that is WAY TOO MUCH WORK! Why work this hard when doing it the proper way would have been much easier & Faster?! I just think of this guy working this issue & getting frustrated for a day or two trying to figure this out 😂😂😂