All lit up

When we bought our house, back in 2015, one of the only rooms that had a light in it was the old library. We hadn’t paid much attention to it, and it was looking a bit unloved and very dusty. We had even thought about replacing it, but I realised I really quite liked it—it just needed a bit of care.

Brian took it down for me earlier this week, and I started to carefully clean it. I obviously can’t get it too wet, but careful washing of the crystals and metal arms soon had it glistening.

There were three candle-like casings covering the light bulb holders, which were looking a bit tired. We were going to replace them with new plastic ones, which we had bought a while back, but when we removed them we realised they were tubes of wood, with plaster mouldings. Obviously original, we instead gave them a coat of paint and slid them back into place.

Whilst I did this, Brian got on with fitting the ceiling rose.

The next step was to pop a new connector onto the wires, and Brian created a small metal hook to hang it safely from the ceiling through the centre of the ceiling rose. We also needed to add a ceiling cup of some kind to cover the wires, fortunately a trip to Brian’s ‘box of treasure’ revealed a suitable porcelain cup to use.

Brian also suggested that we need to look for some shades to fix to the bulbs, “hah, I already have some” I exclaimed, and dashed off to find them. They have a simple, cream silk covering, but are quite pretty. I’d bought them a while back, thinking our dining room shades would need replacing at some point and these would work perfectly. I can easily look out for others though.

With everything now in place the tricky task of fixing it to the ceiling began. Jobs that require your arms to be above your head are always a little difficult, and this one was particularly tricky, but we were soon admiring our sparkling newly renovated chandelier.