Painted Fan Blades

We saw the idea and decided to really go for it. We had decided on Tuscan Yellow for the fan blades, but it became "Deep Yellow." Again, we live in Georgia so the fan is always on. We were going for massive color so we decided to paint the entire fan rather than just chevron like the original website.

Where I got the idea from: Design Sponge

Time: 2 hours (unless you have issues screwing in the blades)

Shopping List:

2 colors of arcylic paint ($8)

Painters tape

Foam Brush

Ladder & Screw driver

Instructions

1. Prep: Unscrew the fan blades...this didn't take too long and did show some much needed dusting TLC. We washed the blades off quickly and dried them.

2. More Prep: Then we took off the attachments from the blade to the fan (what that is called escapes me). It wasn't too difficult as those screws were very large.

3. Paint Base: We painted the fans yellow, using a foam brush. This took two coats. Be sure to get the sides of the fan. If you have a spot or two, no one is going to notice (and we'll have to paint these back white anyway when we decide to sell). The blades kind of looked like duck feet!

4. Paint Accent: After that thoroughly dried (thank you Georgia sun!) we went for the red. This is the same red as the coffee table to help tie in all of the reds. I let Alex pick out the designs, since this was "his project." I was skeptical at how far apart he had his lines, but in the end they turned out okay.So for the red paint, we taped off the area we wanted to keep yellow, and thickly painted the red lines. We were running out of time/sunlight/red paint so we went for one thick application rather than two thinner applications. The only difficult part was the edges of the fan blade. I would paint those first, so the paint doesn't bulge up on the sides causing you to resmooth out the paint on the blades.

5. Reassembly: We let these dry and screwed on the white fan blade attachments

 
6. The Damn Screws: Screwing the fan blades back into the ceiling fan resulted in a few drinks...With one ladder, you need two people, but two people can't reach the fan. So this is what I finally did, which saved us from a Monday Morning Hangover. Take the fan blade, put the screw into the fan blade, and put the screw driver into the screw. Be sure you're holding the handle of the screw and not the top. Put all pieces together into the blade and screw into the holes. I am right handed and so I used my right hand to screw the blade in, and held my arm up bent kinda like a chicken to hold the fan blade in place so it would stop spinning. It may be easier to unscrew the bulbs first, but at this point it would have taken longer to do that!

Ultimately, the colors kind of look like we're big Harry Potter Gryffindor fans. But as I said earlier, the fan is always spinning, so now it just has some cool rings to it. It also ties in a lot of the colors!