Lucky in Lighting

Hello friends, it's good to talk to you again!

I hope I remember how to do this blogging thing...haha! Anyway, I have been spending a lot of time on facebook and I realized that 1) while fun, it is not the best venue to go into lengthy detail about my projects and finds, and 2) probably a lot of my "regular" friends do not care about all that stuff. But all my blogger pals might and I miss you guys! (And if you want to be fb friends leave a comment below, and I will message you.)

Of course I still thrift a lot and frequent as many yard sales and flea markets as I can. In the last couple of weeks I have been really lucky to find some really cool stuff that I wanted to share. One of the things I love to find is cool mid-century lighting.

Now, the thing about lighting is that if there are any issues with the wiring you have a situation on your hands. A bad one. So I always make sure that the wiring is good and replace it if necessary. It is a good thing my brother is an electrician because he is always on hand to advise me!

I have been looking for a cool atomic lamp for our bedside table. Actually I would have loved to have found a pair of lamps, but anything was better than the crappy 80s brass faux-Stiffel lamp my husband was using. (Did I mention he won it in a poker game? Well, game ON!) Anyway, I grabbed this awesome lamp at a flea market for $3. It was marked "Miller 1955" on the turquoise ceramic part. It was also covered in mouse poop and super nasty.

Yeah, that bottom is supposed to be shiny metal. I think I actually hosed it off with a pressure washer- clearly it had to be re-wired in addition to completely cosmetically restored. 

I took it apart and repainted all the metal parts with gold spray paint. Instead of going to the hardware store and buying a $10 lamp kit, I went to the thrift store and bought a donor lamp with a good socket and cord for 99 cents.

After putting it all back together and testing it out- success!- it was time for the fun part: trying on shades. I may be a bit of a vintage-lampshade-hoarder...

 I really wanted the larger tiered shade to work, but it sat too high. I may try again if I can find a smaller harp. I ended up going with the green fiberglass shade on the right. I actually like the look quite a bit and to my relief, the light in the room is not actually green.

Since we have a lot of green, including the bedspread, in our bedroom, it works well.

 My second lighting score was just the other day. I went to a thrift store I haven't been to in a while. (Basically they price everything "vintage" ridiculously high, like 3x ebay prices, so I just haven't bothered going.) But for some reason I decided to go. And whadyya know, I actually found a something!

I bought these two Mid Century Modern pendant lights for a song. They even have their original ceiling plates. After doing a little research, it looks like they might be by designer Paavo Tynell. They would be so cool in someone's MCM house, so I listed them in my Etsy shop. Here's hoping Katy Perry buys them, lol.

I did test them out and they work great!

Now, my third adventure in lighting is a little bit different. No fab modern pieces here- just trying to update a fixture on a budget. We have a bit of a rustic vibe up at our cabin. At least I have been trying to get that going. And clearly this fixture above the sink that my mother-in-law picked out was not working for that look. (She picked out all the finishes for the place about 15 years ago after she retired from working at a bank, where she was in charge of the appearance of all the bank branches. I tease her that her house even looked like a bank.)

Maybe it's because I grew up in the 80s, but I cannot stand that shiny brass look. So now that the place is all ours, I have been doing what I can to get rid of it, but without spending a lot of $$. I discovered Rust-o-leum hammered bronze spray paint, and painted all the shiny brass cabinet knobs last year. I figured, why not try it on the light fixture as well? So I took it down, lightly sanded it and painted it. I left the frosted glass globes off entirely and swapped the bulbs for Edison bulbs, I think it came out pretty well, and definitely cost less than a brand new fixture!

It's not easy, being green.

Whew! Sorry folks. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. I knew when I started this blog that it would be hard to keep up with it, and for once I was right. So bear with me; I hope to be able to post more often.

It's probably not real obvious when you meet me, but we're just about as green as we can be. I mean, I'm not a dread-locked hippie wearing hemp clothes (heaven forbid!) and my politics are probably the polar opposite of what you might expect. But I do think it is our responsibility to preserve what we can of our beautiful world.

As kids, my mother got us into recycling and composting back when that was probably considered 'weird'. (We're talking late 1970s.) I have a really hard time throwing away things that could be re-used or recycled. I guess that's part of the reason why I love vintage.

My love for vintage usually fits neatly in with my environmental consciousness. I mean, what's not to love about 70 year-old furniture, clothes, etc? They're not wasting precious new resources, they're better made than new things, and they're not supporting the American drive for conspicuous comsumption.

However, lately I've been having issues with lighting, and the holidays make it all the worse. I'm all for using low-energy types of bulbs when possible- most of our light bulbs around the house are CFLs. But they just don't cast the same warm glow, and I need that in the winter! Plus, if you have many different types of vintage lamps, as we do, they take oddball shapes and sizes. Your standard CFL just won't work in that milk-glass torchiere that needs a wide base bulb. I shudder to think what will happen when standard incandescants are phased out once and for all. Something tells me that you'll be able to spot the true vintage enthusiast by how many incandescants they have stockpiled!

I used to be one of those people that preferred only white lights at the holidays. But lately, I've embraced the old-fashioned C9 colored lights of the past. I just love the looks of them strung along the roofline of our barn. But they get hot as hell. I can't imagine having them on a cut tree indoors- no wonder people always worried about Christmas trees catching fire. And I'm sure that they are the main reason our electric bill is 20% higher in December.

But I won't give them up for anything. I like the idea of LEDs, but I can't stand the looks of them at Christmas. And even though the energy savings would probably be significant, I think there's got to be a plus side for the carbon footprint of my C9s. I mean, they were manufactured 50+ years ago, somewhere in the USA, and aren't using any new petroleum or rubber products, either in manufacturing or transport from halfway around the world. So there- string up your lights and show some incandescant pride! (If you can get them untangled, that is.)