Chandelier Installation, WD40, and Plaster Color Selection

Oooh...our postal carrier brought us a box yesterday. What could be inside?


The dining room chandelier. Yay! In my hand I'm holding up one of the arms from the chandelier beside one of the sconces we installed a few weeks ago. We couldn't find a patent date on the chandelier, but it's obvious they are from the same line. The sconces themselves are marked 1926. The chandelier came from New Jersey, the sconces from, I think, a seller in Michigan. But we joked around that these were probably the original fixtures to our house come home again.


Unfortunately, the chandelier is not brass and copper, as the seller said. It's brass with copper-painted accents and steel. Know how we know it's steel? Because of all the rust. When we unwrapped it, we were surprised to see tons of rust flecks everywhere. When Ted disassembled the chandelier to rewire it, we saw why.

The base is made of painted steel, and it looks like water had at some point leaked from whatever ceiling it was hanging from, through the fixture, and collected in the base.

I grumbled a bit to the seller who did, to be fair, offer to take the chandelier back for a refund. But it matched our sconces exactly, so I wasn't willing to give it up. However, if a seller says it's made of brass, I don't want to find out it's really rusty steel.

We did what we could to halt the rust. Big fans of WD40, we soaked rags with it and wiped out all the interior rust, being careful not to let it flow onto the exterior finish. It worked pretty well.

We ended up wiping down most of the interior screws and anchoring bits as well, ridding them of rust and adding a protective layer of WD40.

Then Ted replaced the blah and boring lamp cord with bronze cloth-covered cord, at least for the cords that were showing. I think you can see a bit of it in the photo below. The rest of the cord had been replaced recently, and was in good shape, so we left it.

Then we hung it up, stuck in some bulbs, and went outside to admire it from the street. (You can see detailed pics of the chandelier at this previous post.)

The kittens seemed pretty impressed, too.

Or maybe it was just the lady bug crawling across it.

We're nearly done with what we plan for the dining room. Mom and I went to The Home Depot today to pick up some Behr Venetian Plaster for the walls. I'll do a how-to on Venetian Plaster next week, but here's a sneak peek at the color.

Yummy, no?

New Chandelier for the Dining Room, Take 2

Remember the super nifty chandelier I bought on eBay more than a month ago?

The seller, who lives up in Canada, packed it really, really well. Better than most things I receive in the mail. The five shades were individually wrapped in specially fashioned cardboard containers, and the frame was double-boxed and packed so full with peanuts it would not shift in the slightest. The seller said it took her forever, but she was confident it would get to our house safely.

And yet, Fed Ex somehow managed to break it.

Part of the frame just snapped in two pieces.

It doesn't really look that bad, just a tiny little break. But the broken bit has a screw that attaches this arm to another part of the frame. Still, it's a clean break, and we figured we could probably glue it together. But because it is a 85-year-old light fixture, we decided to check in with some experts first. We first took the light to Marshall Electric Supply, Inc. (7400 N. Western, Chicago), an awesome place for hard-to-find electric supplies...

...and then on over to A Lamp & Fixture (3181 N Elston Ave), which specializes in vintage light repairs.

At both places we were told that because the frame is made of pot metal, it's essentially unrepairable. Neither would touch it. The pot metal could not be soldered because of its low melting point, and neither epoxy nor glue could be trusted to hold, not even the epoxies supposedly meant for pot metal. I Googled this afterward, because I'm stubborn, and found site after site and forum after forum that pretty much said the same thing. Unrepairable.

Technically, we could still hang it up and the other four arms of the frame would probably keep the light stable. But we didn't necessarily want to risk that, and having exhausted the options for repair, we decided to go ahead and put in the claim with Fed Ex for either full compensation, or partial compensation so we could keep the shades, which are lovely, and find another frame. I was glad we spent the extra couple bucks for insurance. One way or the other, Fed Ex would have to pay us something for breaking and devaluing the chandelier. This is where it got to be a pain in the butt.

The seller was, at this point, vacationing in Mexico so told me to go ahead and start the claim process. I did so through the Fed Ex web site, where it asked if I was the buyer or seller, and then had me upload photos and supporting documents. I then talked with a service rep over the phone and was told that someone would come by to look at it, but nobody ever showed.

The seller got back from vacation and tried from her end; after a great deal of hassle in which Fed Ex couldn't find the original claim, she finally arranged for them to come get the light for evaluation. Because it's an antique, they wanted to take it to their expert for an opinion. The receipts for what I paid, before and after photos, and evidence of what similar ones are worth, was not enough for them.

Still, nobody showed up. In the mean time, I got a letter from Fed Ex denying the claim because I was the buyer, not the seller. I was to start the whole process again through the seller, and Fed Ex would deal with the seller only. (Then why allow me, the buyer, to start the claim? I don't know.) This, in spite of the fact that the seller was now dealing with them directly.

The seller spent the next two weeks leaving messages higher and higher up the Fed Ex chain, and nobody ever returned her calls. Finally, completely frustrated herself, she had me pack up the whole thing and ship it back to her where she's going to take it to Fed Ex in person and show them the damage. She's already refunded me for the chandelier and for shipping both ways, but I worry what Fed Ex will say to her now that she has the chandelier back in her possession. I wish her luck. It's been over a month that we've been trying to get this settled, and I'm just glad that, from our perspective, it's over with.

Lesson: Always buy insurance when you buy big-ticket eBay items. One way or the other, the seller will have to find a way to compensate you.

Although bummed, I went back on eBay to see what else was out there. I wasn't feeling particularly hopeful, because through some sort of fluke in the first place our winning bid had been roughly half of what similar chandeliers generally go for; we were shocked at the time, and so excited that an original slip shade chandelier was within our price range.

So, I spent half an hour scrolling through auction listings for art deco chandeliers, and couldn't find anything suitable and affordable.

But guess what? Tucked amongst the other listings I actually spotted one for a 1920s chandelier to match the sconces (circa 1926) we just installed in the living room.

The Sconces:


The Chandelier:

I know, I know; it's a completely different direction from the slip shade chandelier we wanted.

It had a "Buy it Now" option for a little bit more than what we paid for the slip shade, and I went tearing upstairs, shouting for Mom and Ted, to take a look because I simply couldn't believe it.

Although there are some variations, it's obvious this is made by the same manufacturer. The ridges, the flowers, the arrow head designs, the fans. Both the sconces and chandelier have 'em.

And, unlike the slip shade light, this chandelier is made of copper and brass. We utilized the "make an offer" feature of eBay, and waited on pins and needles for all of two minutes before the seller got back to us with a yes.

What are the odds of finding this, do you think? It Fed Ex hadn't been such a pain to deal with and paid out the claim in a timely manner, we never would have seen this. It's fate. This chandelier was meant to be ours.

I still want to fit slip shade lights somewhere in The Box House, maybe the bedrooms. But for that, there is no rush. We already way blew the budget for the month on light fixtures. So no more chandelier shopping for me.

Unless I see a really cool one on eBay, that is.

Cleaning Our Antique Light Fixture, Pulling More Wire, and Another Conduit Mystery

Well, much to my disappointment, the antique light fixtures we won on eBay still haven't arrived at our door. Granted, one of them I paid for just last week, but it's been a few weeks since we sent payment for the other. What's that seller's excuse? Grrr. I want to get these installed soon, because my cousin is coming in town in a few weeks and she hasn't seen the place yet. I want to distract her from the disastrous bathroom and the super outdated kitchen with pretty, sparkly lights.

Well, I can't really complain too much. We still have to finish pulling new wire through the conduit before the lights can be installed, anyway. So that's what Ted and I did today. With a little help--as always--from Seamus.

I think I've gotten over my fear of rewiring; I'm no longer hyperventilating and thinking "OMG, I'm working with electricity!" Because really, I'm not. I'm just the Girl Friday, the one that chants "heave, ho!" and feeds the wires into the wall. Ted is the one who knows what he's doing and can hook everything back up again. Of course, I nag him to test and test and test the lines again to make sure they're not live. But that's me; I worry cuz I care. And because he humors me, he tests them again in my presence, even though he's already tested them several times and maps everything he discovers in our "Box House Book."

So, pulling old wires and replacing them with new has become fairly routine. We'll be ready to install the dining room chandelier and the front hall light when and if they ever get here.

And while we're at it, we're replacing all the cloth wiring along that circuit. That includes the wire leading up to the light fixture in the front stairwell, the stairwell that leads to both the front door of our unit and the tenants' door upstairs.

The stairwell is lit by two gorgeous matching light fixtures, one on each level, that are probably original to the house. Seriously, the lights are what really sold me on The Box House. I walked through the door and fell in love, just like that. Here's one of them:

But look closer; some moron in the past painted the ceiling without bothering to either tape up the canopy piece or loosen the screw to drop it enough to paint under it. What a mess. (Click on the picture to enlarge and truly understand my annoyance.)

I was really nervous to try to remove this paint, because I was terrified I'd also remove the gold paint underneath. The lamp is some kind of pot metal with a red, green and gold polychrome paint job. What I finally did was to get a shallow bowl and fill it with an inch of warm, sudsy water--I just used dish soap. Then I let the canopy soak in the water for fifteen minutes or so. This seemed to soften the paint enough that I could remove it with my fingernail. It was tedious, and underneath the splashed on white latex was a layer of slopped over taupe-colored enamel--the dreaded enamel that seems to cover the wood trim in the bedrooms, and is nearly impervious to strippers. Luckily, for once, it didn't seem to adhere to this particular surface. I was able to scrape it off with my fingernail as well. Voila!

I don't think these lights have been taken down in decades; here's what it looked like when I started to wipe away the dust with a damp cloth:
Granted, some of that is sawdust from when we refinished the stairs--that stuff gets everywhere.

I had decided not to take the panels out to clean the glass. Each is held in place by a foldover metal tab, and I did not want to risk bending the old metal in case it snapped. So I used a damp sponge and warm, sudsy water to gently wipe the whole lamp down. To get the moisture out from behind the metal grill work when I was done, I used a can of compressed air to blow it out. All in all, it worked very well. It's possible to see more detail on the surface now, and I'll take another picture when I get the light back in place.

We did encounter another mystery while pulling the wire. We thought it would be a straight shot from the dining room ceiling fixture to the ceiling box in the living room, a distance of maybe 20 feet max. Afterall, there are no other fixtures that it could be powering. However, the wire we pulled out was more than three times that length. So the conduit was not straight, and was traveling off somewhere else, to power what, we're not entirely sure yet.

We first double-checked the remaining wall outlets in the living room, including the one in the floor that powers our old electric fireplace. No luck. None of those wires were connected.

So now, our best guess is that there's another electric box or two hidden behind the plaster. The most likely scenerio, since the conduit seems to be heading in that general direction, is that there were two sconces above the fireplace, in typical bungalow fashion. And just as we found a dip in the plaster where there was once a lightswitch, careful inspection above the fireplace shows a few dips in the plaster that might have been the location of sconces.

Arrgh, I neglected to take another picture of the fireplace to show y'all, and the only one I seem to be able to find on the hard drive is this one from Christmas. It'll have to do. In the space on either side of the mirror there is a suspicious swirl of plaster, no doubt covering up newspaper-stuffed electric boxes.

We need to do some investigation as we did before, possibly some test drilling to find the boxes, but I'm so excited at the thought that we might have discovered another vintage detail buried by a previous owner.

Art Deco Slip Shade Chandelier for One of the Dining Rooms

I turn 40 on Saturday (OMG how did that happen?) and I decided to get myself a cool gift to celebrate. Rather, I decided to get something cool for the house, and justify the purchase by claiming it as a gift for myself.

I've long wanted to replace some of the fugly light fixtures at The Box House with period slip shade chandeliers, but they tend to be freakishly expensive. I'm constantly trolling eBay for one, bidding often but futilely because I've set a rather low limit for what I feel we can spend.

Today, I watched the seconds tick down to zero for one particular auction, sipping my Diet Coke and idly thinking about how to coordinate errands tomorrow, when it dawned on me that the clock had ticked away to nothing and I had won. Yippie!

So, some time next week, a nifty 1930s amber five light slip shade chandelier will be making its way down from Canada to be installed in the dining room of either the downstairs or the upstairs unit of The Box House. I'm just not sure which one yet.

Is This Our New Light Fixture? Help Us Decide!

Ted and I went to a superdy-dooper store closing sale today, and picked up a chandelier for the dining room. One of us thinks it works and fits the size of the room, the other one of us isn't so sure (I won't say who quite yet).

First of all, here's a close up of our crappy old fixture:


Ugh. Don't click on it for the expanded view. We never even bothered dusting it after we moved in, because, honestly, we didn't think it would be hanging here this long. Only two of the bulbs are still working, because we didn't bother changing out the burned ones for the same reason. One of us thinks the old light is too small for the room, the other one thinks it's fine. (Again, I'm not sayin' who.)

Here's a close-up of the new one. Sources online are selling it for $242 to $659 (yeah, I'm not kidding. But the one at $659 includes the bulbs, LOL). We picked this one up for sixty bucks. Yeah, $60.00. Who cares if we have to buy bulbs, right?

The drop is about 28 inches, roughly where our old one hangs down to now. It is about 9 inches wider overall, but all of the upward facing lights are higher. So it's only the nipple-light at the bottom that hangs as low as the old fixture; the base of the others are about six inches up. It is freakin' heavy, and while we may have to swap out the electric box to support the weight, there is probably less of a chance of bumping your head on this one.

We're really having trouble coming to an agreement on this. Should we use it or not? Ted stood up on a chair to kind of hold it up there and get an idea. As far as perspective, he's standing maybe 1 1/2 to 2 feet closer to the camera than the old lamp is. It's bigger, but not that much bigger.

Basically, do you all think it fits the size of the room? All opinions are welcome! Rocks, paper, scissors can't decide it this time.


Thanks!

Painted Cabinets and Dining Room Murals

And now for a little house porn...

I love visiting Bob and Rachel, my future in-laws (although they're saying yeah, right, when are you guys really getting married?) The kitchen / dining room / living room area of their house is absolutely fabulous. When you walk in the front door, the first thing you'll see is the red living room:

I do love a bold, red room! It's one of the things I miss from our condo; my office was just this shade of red. And the white shutters here really make it pop. The fireplace is painted. Yeah, I couldn't believe it was a faux texture when I first saw it. I love, love it.

Just off the living room is the dining room. Although there is a smaller table in the kitchen, this is the one we gather around in the morning to read the newspaper and drink our coffee. The mural, I believe, was done by a friend of theirs. Isn't it gorgeous? I wish I had the talent for this, but the artistic gene in our family skipped me altogether. I wonder if we could hire a student artist from Northwestern University to do something like this at The Box House?

But oh, silly me! What I really wanted to show you all was the kitchen--but I neglected to take full-room pictures of it! You'll have to settle for these close ups.

Not long ago, I mentioned wanting to paint the old wooden cabinets at my mom's other house. This was my inspiration:
Aren't they incredible? Although our enclosed porch at The Box House is now gray and yellow, it is nowhere near as sunny and cheerful as this room. And I think Rachel's pottery collection is what really ties it all together. (I think if you click on the images you'll be able to see some of the textured faux finishes on the walls as well.)

This was our first visit to K.C. since moving into our own new home. So we found ourselves studying the bones and construction and finishing techniques in ways we haven't before. In fact, Ted says he felt like he got busted with house porn in hand, because he was all alone in the basement studying their ceiling joists when Rachel came downstairs!

We live and breathe home improvement projects these days; I don't think it's possible to just go to anyone else's house anymore without studying the construction itself.

New Push Button Switch in Dining Room

This, I believe, is the ugliest switch plate cover in the house. Uglier than the Winnie-the-Pooh one we replaced upstairs for the tenants, and uglier than the "God Bless This Home" one we still need to replace in my mom's bedroom. Seriously, look at that thing.

One of our long-term goals is to replace all of the switches in the main living areas, the "show rooms," with good ol' fashioned push button switches. It's a long-term goal because, individually, these switches are not cheap. The only one we had switched out so far was in the stairwell by the front door. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe this was the ugliest switch we had. What do you think?

The new one in the stairwell is soooo much better!

So, having saved up enough pennies for another one, we decided to swap out the seriously fug dining room switch with a three gang push button switch from Classic Accents. It was $20.95 for the cover plate itself, and another $65.00 to get the three switches that would control it, including the dimmer switch for the chandelier. (Seriously, I can't believe I just typed that. Eighty-six bucks? It will be another half year before we replace the next ones, I think! Or else I need to find another source for push button switches.)

One of Ted's major accomplishments last week was to map the electrical for the downstairs unit. He had previously done so for the tenants' unit, but until this week, the downstairs was a bit of a mystery. So, while I essentially baked my concord grape pie by candlelight, he was flipping breakers on and off to see which fuse serviced which outlets. The goal is to get as clear a picture as possible of our wiring, a combination of old and new.

These are the switches we found behind the ugly dining room plate cover. They're ceramic.


Here is Ted putting on the finishing touches to the switch; I'm not supposed to be peeking, so don't tell him I took this shot.

And voila! Another nifty new switch. The one on the far left is actually a push button dimmer. The top button turns it on off, and the bottom controls the brightness. It blends in nicely with the true push buttons.

Please don't look at our dingy wall, or the fact that we still need to strip and refinish the wood.

Floor Sanding Options

Today we had a couple of flooring contractors come to the Box House to give us estimates on what it would cost to sand and refinish the floors in both units, as well as the front entry stairwell.

The floors in the main rooms of the top unit (living room, dining room, entryway) were recently "done," but I'm not sure if it was a "professional" or one of the Previous Owner's family members. In any case, he or she didn't bother going under or behind the radiators. The wood there is quite dark, while the rest of the area appears to have only a thin coat of varnish over bare wood. (The stairs are the same way. They have pools of darker stain in the corners, but the rest of the tread is quite light.) The three bedrooms upstairs are covered in ancient carpet.

Living Room of the Top Floor Unit. Sure, it may look good at a quick glance, but what you don't see is how the floor's only protected with a very thin layer of varnish. We also want to get it back to the original color, which is a little darker.

In the downstairs unit, the floors hadn't been sanded at all. Most of the floor downstairs is in decent shape--certainly better than many of the rental units I lived at in my younger days--but there are several boards that will have to be removed and replaced due to previous damage. Boards near a radiator in the bedroom off the kitchen appear to have water damage, and there are holes in the floor of the dining room. There's also a large dark stain we believe to be cat urine, but from what the contractors told us and what I've read on other house blogs, we may be stuck with that unless we replace those boards, too.

Both contractors who stopped by had been recommended by our buyer's agent. J.E. had previously recommended a mortgage broker and a lawyer who we were very pleased with, so we're willing to start with his recommendations here.

The first guy gave us an excellent price, one we can certainly live with, and even said he'd rip out and haul away the gawd-awful carpeting and replace the damaged boards for free. His quote included two layers of varnish; if we wanted more, it would cost more. But even then, it seemed a good price. However, there is a major language barrier and he was only here about 10 minutes or so. I'm not entirely convinced he really saw the full scope of the project, and I'm not entirely sure what we'd be getting. For example, it was difficult to convey that we wanted the floors to be a color complimentary to the rest of the trim.

The second contractor was here for 45 minutes, and she went over every room in detail, discussing which boards should be replaced, measuring everything with her tape measurer, giving us a bit of history of old floors. (The most interesting thing I learned is that they are no longer able to get wood flooring at the same length as was commonly installed 80 years ago. One of the floorboards that needs to be replaced is over 15 feet long; they'll cut only the bad section out at a length that can blend in easily, but leave the rest in place.) She's to send us a full proposal by Monday. My gut tells me it won't be as good as the other, probably nowhere near as good. She's talking about having two crews out here for upwards of two weeks. I'm sure the floors will look spectacular, but will we be able to afford it?

There's always the option of doing it piecemeal, one unit at a time as we can afford it, but right now we have all of our stuff in the basement, and it would be easy to work on the floors. The other option is to do it ourselves. *Shudder*