How to Install a Bathroom Fan

About a month ago, hubby and I installed our new bathroom fan.

This was at the top of our to-do list since the old fan really wasn't cutting it. Unfortunately, in the four years that we rented the house out to that wonderful, little family (I say this with a smile on my face because they completely tore up our house), the bathroom ceiling got mega-super-duper mildew-y. Honestly, it was discusting.

Luckily, Justin cleaned the ceiling before I even got to see how bad it really was, but you'll see how gross the ceiling was in the pictures below.

Gross.

We de-mildewed it with JoMax Mold & Mildew Stain Remover and scrubbed away what we could. We then talked to our new best friends at Home Depot and asked about any special paint or products to prevent this from happening again. They recommended that we paint the entire room in a statin finish. This finish acts as a protective barrier against mildew and mold because of how thick and glossy it is.

Done.

The other obvious answer to fix this problem is a strong fan.

We chose a fan with a high fan power of 110 CFM (the higher the better). But just because we wanted an uber-powerful fan, didn't mean we wanted it to sound like an airplane taking off. So we went with a quiet volume of 1.0 Sones (the lower the better).

HOW TO INSTALL A BATHROOM FAN

1. Measure and mark out the new fan dimensions on the ceiling. Note: We measured slightly larger than the fan dimensions to allow for room to move around while installing.

2. Cut the measured space out of the sheetrock with a multi-tool. If you don't have a multi-tool, feel free to use a utility knife. It requires a little more elbow grease, but it's entirely doable.

3. We needed to replace our piping between the fan & the side of the house, since the circumfurance was different with our fan, so we went to Home Depot and purchased 6 feet of new aluminum pipe.

Cut pipe to the correct length: distance bween the exhaust of the fan to the vent cover on the side of your house.

4. Connect pipe to the vent cover on the side of your house.

5. Turn off your power in the bathroom. Take the existing wires in your ceiling and connect to the wires from the new fan. You do this by putting the wires side-by-side and twisting a wire nut over the top.

6.  Attach the vent pipe to the fan exhaust/vent while placing the fan casing in the ceiling. Screw the fan casing to the ceiling joist (aka the big wooden beam in your celing).

7. Turn the power back on and check that the fan is working.

8. Cut sheet rock to fit around the fan casing (if you cut it larger to move around like we did). Reinstall sheet rock by screwing in to the joists. Then tape, mud, dry, sand and repeat as needed.

7. Paint celing.

8. Install fan cover.

9. In the words of hubby: Enjoy your stink free bathroom.

This is our first step-by-step how-to but we did our best to describe each step as completely as we could. But of course let me know if you have any questions.