So when we got the house there were quite a few chandeliers. Now, the one in our dining room is original to the house and is beautiful; the ones in the living room are Walmart specials with plastic "candles" and flame shaped lights.
 |
| Before |
Not exactly our style.
Since we're going with a retro-future/art nouveau/art deco/steampunk thing, the octopus-ish shape of the actual brass didn't bother me; but the (much more brown with age than the ones shown above) "candles" and flame lights... ugh. Fortunately, the tubes happened to be standard 3/4", which happens to be a size that copper pipe is available in. I took one of the plastic "candles" off, measured it, got a 6' copper pipe from Fleet Farm, and cut 20 of these little beauties (pipe cutters are cheap and easy to use):
 |
| Cat not included. |
In order to make them fit correctly I had to ream out the burr made on the inside of the pipes by the cutter, which I did with my good camping knife (good steel doesn't have much of a problem with copper).
Then all I had to do was take off all the light bulbs and plastic "candles", put the new copper pipe where the plastic used to be, and replace the bulbs with odd, interesting, period-style bulbs (a couple of the ones I'm currently using aren't as period as I'd like, but as period bulbs are 'spensive I'm dealing with the cheapies for now). Here's the result:
 |
| After |
Now, I'd still like to replace the hanging chain with something older/heavier/more nautical/bronze, and I really want to cover the awful plastic power cord with fabric to make it look older too, but it's not a bad start.
No comments :
Post a Comment