"How difficult can it be?..."

I'll leave out the prior day's issue with the water tank system. I thought that would be a fun one to recount, but Sunday's encounter took home the cake, complete with giant sugary roses on top.

At issue was a bathroom fan and light fixture that hadn't worked correctly for some time. Hit the switch, the light came on...but the fan did nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. One of those things you mumble to yourself that you'll look at one free weekend and then promptly forget about it.

Only what you think is just a couple of months quickly becomes a couple of years.

OK, I mused, let's pop the cover and see what's up in that ol' assembly which wasn't really all that old. It was around 8:30am...nice day ahead after Saturday's storms, and I was going to relax and do creative, artistic stuff.

Ah, the best laid plans of man...

You can imagine my total surprise when I removed the first couple of pieces and saw this...click on pics to enlarge for more detailed views:


Truly, it's one of those situations when you see what you see....you blink with that deer-in-the-headlight look, and you tell yourself, "No way! That CAN'T be a hornet's nest sitting there!" But it was. You don't want to believe it. But truth just stares you in the face.

You immediately think of "the next step" which is, now that you've discovered it, you HAVE to do SOMEthing about it. It won't go away on its own. And so I armed myself with wasp spray and a pencil...the pencil to stick into the nest and hold there to see if there is any buzzing activity of a 'live' nest. Thankfully, there wasn't.

And so the initial poking and prodding began. How big? Where did it go? There was only a 3-foot distance between this outlet and the outside wall fixture, which had a malfunctioning exhaust flap, so I found out. 15+ feet high on the side of the house. I pulled what handfuls of powdery nest residue out that I could, and then went outside to (take a deep breath) and put my hand into the vent as far as I could and see what was in there.


What was in there was a sizeable old hive, and the above picture shows only a grouping of the larger pieces that came out. Thankfully, the silvery ducting akin to dryer hose helped a flashlight peer into the cata'combs' as I cleared a vent way and reattached a working flap.

It was the quintessential 1-hour job that took 8 hours, as in the process of discovering, testing, and cleaning, I realized the fan unit was dead as a doornail, but the light unit worked well. An ensuing trip to Lowe's afforded me the right parts and after other minor tribulations, the light and fan came on with the flick of a switch.

Later, I saw another one of those 'little' household idiosyncrasies that beckoned to reach 'active project' status...but after that nest issue, I figured what-the-heck is a couple of more years...