Unglamourous but necessary

= ventilation.
Also it's a huge pain because the ventilation tube is 4" wide and you don't want to go drilling 4" diameter holes into your ceiling joists which support your whole roof and all, so often you're limited in the places you can potentially put your fan...

Usually people just throw their vent fans up into their ceilings and access it from their attics, but this posed a problem for us since our 3rd floor is somewhat finished. Luckily, there is a ~5" crawlspace behind the walls of our third floor and I was able to install the vent fan under that space. (I had grand plans for a vent/light combo in our master shower, but the shower is directly below finished space so I had to scrap that plan).

crawlspace access

The other thing about venting is you need an outlet, preferably not through the roof, since a general rule of thumb is fewer holes in roof = better.

Some research and chatting with home depot associates later, I decided where I wanted to put the vent outlet. I was prepared to be up on a ladder (2 stories up) but then I realized I could just hop out my 3rd floor window and do a balancing act on this slightly flatter portion of our roof.

I decided to wait until Saturday to attack this endeavor, just so I'd have husband Dan on hand in case I fall off my roof (turns out I needed his help for a lot more than spotting).

third floor window...what's that thing dangling out of it??

 

ah, just a string tied around my waist.

 Notice the small party going on in my neighbors yard. It was John's birthday weekend and we provided the entertainment for his mini get-together.

What's on the other end of my string? oh, you know, an old doorknob

it's considerably flatter than other parts of the roof, thankfully

Once I was up there, I quickly realized how much the home depot associate mislead me when he pointed me to a vinyl siding tool and said it's really simple, really obvious blah blah. Vinyl siding is all hooked together and you can't just drill through it because it'll just rattle against the drill/saw, so you have to unhook it with the tool (not easy) and then snip it (also not easy). I had pictured being able to simply snap the siding off like a clasp and snipping it like paper with scissors, so I was getting immensely frustrated when the reality was a little harsher; Dan then hopped on out to help me (he knows if I'm left in that state of frustration too long I'll go INSANE) and we had a merry party up on our roof.

neighbor Sharon took a second from her shindig to snap a picture

The hole we cut out of siding revealed styrafoam insulation, wood siding, and clapboards. We drilled some holes through all that, sawed out a neat little square, and wedged the vent outlet as best we could under the siding (and drilled it in place). It wasn't the prettiest, but you can't tell once you put the cap on:

voila~

flaps open when fan is in use

Then from the inside you attach (with aluminum tape) the vent tube to the outlet and the vent fan:

crawlspace is sooo comfortable and roomy and not itchy

view from master bath directly below crawlspace