The Electrification Project

We've been preparing for the eventual install of the lights in Glenlochan for a while now, but there is still much to be done.  Before the demolition began almost 2 years ago, we carefully saved and packed away the lights that were still hanging in the house, as well as all the miscellaneous glass shades, domes, and chimneys that had been stockpiled in various places throughout the home, cellar and shed.  We have been very fortunate to find a shop in Philadelphia, The Antique Lighthouse, that offers vintage lighting for sale, but also repairs and restores vintage lighting.  We have consulted on all the fixtures in the home, and we've elected to restore six out of eight of them.  Here's a few shots of the ones that are being restored (note, the glass has been removed from some of them):

 And, here's some of the glass, washed and ready to be stored until installation day:

We don't have enough of the original lights to do the entire house, so we have selected a few additional finds from the Antique Lighthouse to purchase - beautiful vintage lights of the same era as Glenlochan to add to our collection.  This one will go in the half bath downstairs:

And, this terrific "pull down" original oil, now converted, light will go above the kitchen sink:

 

We also couldn't resist these vintage floor lamps for the study:

 

And, we've picked a few additional ones that are not pictured (the remaining lights will be purchased new for now until our budget will allow us to replace them with more vintage finds).  We also found multiple identical glass shades that look like this in Glenlochan:

These were originally hung on a single ceramic socket:

Because we have a matching set, however, we've elected to have pole pendants custom made so that we can hang three of these in a row over the pool table.

Finally, there were 2 lights that we opted not to have restored - both were lacquered brass chandeliers (one large, one small) that turned out to be "builder grade" lighting from that era.  Who knew there was "builder grade" materials in use back then?  In any event, the restoration process is not inexpensive and although most of the lights were valued enough to make the restoration cost worthwhile, we were advised that the builder grade chandeliers were not worth the money or time to restore.  They simply have no value.  As such, I decided that it would be impossible to ruin the light, so I'm playing with making it useable on my own.  Here's the original shot of the smaller chandelier:

Because it had been lacquered, I first used a stripper to remove the lacquer from the brass.  I then tried polishing it:

I made a lot of progress but, in some areas, the pitting was so bad that I could not remove it all - and that was after a LOT of elbow grease.  So, I moved on to Plan B and researched how to paint brass.  I've since followed all of the steps to prepare the surface and paint it with a self-etching primer:

My next step will be to paint it in the finish color - most likely an oil rubbed bronze - and then replace the candles.  I'm not at all sure this will be worth the effort in the end, but I couldn't resist experimenting a bit to see if we might be able to incorporate this into Glenlochan somewhere.  Stay tuned!