My grandmother lives about 70 miles from me, so I try to make it there as often as I can. She has a 1953-ish electric wall heater in her bathroom, and the switch has gone out. It is an appliance switch and the yoke is shorter than a standard toggle switch. The appliance does not have any built in safety devices of any sort, nor does it have a fan. You could flip it on, and go on a 6 month vacation and just hope that everything was fine.

Instead of cutting down the yoke on a standard switch, I'd rather just replace the heater with one that has a fan and some built in safety devices. However, the old heater measures (outside of trim) 47" x 9". Most of the electric wall heaters are around 12" x 10".

Do I have any options other than patching drywall?