Thanks to my sister’s nudge, I realize that five years ago, my husband and I were into the push to clean up and out of new home and get moved into it. On this day back then, I was working on the light fixtures, many of them original to the 1927 bungalow that is now ours.
So, let’s go on a lighting adventure and revisit the lighting as it is today. (Now that I’ve taken a couple days to dust and clean.)
I found this 1920s fixture online to replace an 80s era basic bath vanity fixture over the kitchen sink. I love this light. The photo on the right is after install, on the left now with fancy LED bulbs (and a bit of grunge).
This one above is in the upstairs bedroom. It had a good bit of chipped enamel so after cleaning, I applied gold spray paint with a foam paint brush to hide the damage and fancy up the feel of the fixture. It is still missing the finial from the center nut.
The music room came with an unfortunate 80s era brass beveled glass porch fixture. I found a replacement similar to the one from the upstairs room. I didn’t touch it up, I just kept the fine scratches as personality.
The back bedroom light received a deep cleaning and a brush of gold. A thrift store tulip shade improved the proportions and detail of the fixture.
Friends of my husband gave us a lovely crystal fixture that we used to replace another outdoor fixture in the main bathroom. Who doesn’t want a chandelier in the bath?
The fixture on the upstairs landing just needed a deep clean to remove plaster, paint, and grunge.
The back hallway light was rather simple but had eye pins for hanging baubles, which I swiped from the kitchen fixtures to fancy up the hallway.
The flush mount kitchen fixture is a 1920s style found online to replace a newer utility light. I went with this one because it shared so many details with the chandelier. The glass baubles that came with it were obviously not original. A few went to the back hallway fixture, the rest are stored away to maybe one day become holiday ornaments.
The chandelier was the biggest win of the fixtures that came with the house. The response I have to this thing is absolutely ridiculous. And celebrated.
Back when we moved in, I striped all the glass baubles and ran them through the dishwasher and used the opportunity of a stripped fixture to deep clean the chandelier. Utilizing my past-life skills from jewelry-making, I replaced all of the wire pins hanging the glass adornments.
To accommodate the missing baubles, I broke down the clusters into smaller sets to stretch coverage. This gained the baubles for a couple of the fixtures shown above.
There you have it: the fixtures of our little wabi-sabi cottage.
our cattywampus cottage 