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!

Tour of Chez QT- our Living Room

OK, so I've been talking about this for a long, long time. And then I proceed to blabber on and on about thrift finds and Pyrex.... Well, now it's finally here- the living room reveal!

Last year we (OK, me) decided to revamp our living room. Part of this was by necessity, in that we had to move our entertainment center and some other furniture up to our mountain cabin, so we would have living room furniture up there. And it was also necessary to bring up some of the beautiful mid century modern furniture I had stashed away in the basement!

So here is the only "before" shot I could find- the plaid sofa left over from my husband's bachelor days kind of epitomized the entire room. The coffee table got a MCM makeover, which you can read about here.



I did not paint or really change the overall color scheme. Our walls are kind of a terra cotta color and the sofas are still olive green, although they are new and more modern-looking. The rug is the same burnt red color that used to match the drapes, but then I found these amazing deadstock pinch pleat drapes which you can read about here.

So, to start the tour, you come in through our original 1960 three-paned mahogany door. At one time we almost changed it to a more modern door, but I am super glad we decided to keep it. The wood is beautiful; it just glows.

The oak cabinet is a reproduction of a vintage ice box. It doesn't really match the style of the room anymore, but we do need the storage for videos and records. (Yes, records- as you will see I have many radio/record players in this room.) That is a 1946 GE tabletop radio next to the atomic lamp and the two amazing Rosenthal candle holders I got from Dana over at Mid2Mod! The B&W photo is a family piece, as are a couple others in the room. All the photos are B&W because there is plenty of color elsewhere!

On the right of the door is a little nook that is the perfect size for this 1946 RCA console radio. The front flips open, as you can see, to reveal the radio dial. The record player is under the left side of the top. That is a vintage weather station (Bakelite thermometer/ barometer) on top. There is a round mirror up above (see first photo) and I would eventually like to have a hanging modern ceramic light (W. German style) here, but haven't found the right one yet.

To the left of the door is the main living space, with the large window and large sofa backing it. The other sofa is a loveseat, which we had to special order from Rowe, because apparently no one buys loveseats anymore. They just buy a big sofa or sectional and two Lay-Z-Boys, I guess. That is the same coffee table I posted above, it just looks a lot better now with hairpin legs and a Dansk Kobenstyle enamel piece on top!

You can see my favorite photo of FDR and a 48 star US flag there on the left.

Here is a detail shot of all my vintage planters on the window sill. The two on the right are German ceramics, which I collect.

The leaded glass cabinet was inherited from my Grandmother- she had it removed from a house they lived in long ago. It was built in, so some of the sides are a little rough- which is cool with me. I have a couple more radios and vintage electronics in there, as well as my collections of tiki mugs and cocktail shakers on top. They are up there out of harm's way, because normally this room is full of my kids' toys and books. (I had to get up so early to take these photos, before they came down and filled it with their clutter, LOL!) And another radio on the left at bottom, a Zenith black dial chairside.

Continuing around the room is my famous TV-quarium in the corner. It's a 1950 Motorola that I took the guts out of and put an aquarium inside. The clock is a George Nelson repro, and the owl TV lamp with glowing eyes is a fairly recent thrift find.
 

In place of our giant entertainment center we brought up this 1958 Motorola HiFi console, which had belonged my husband's parents. It has the perfect sleek modern vibe and is a great platform for my light up globe and another vintage TV lamp. On the left are two W. German fat lava planters that actually match. I found them separately, almost a year apart. One thing about this living room, almost nothing is new. The only things not vintage here are the sofas and the TV.

If you would keep going at this point, you'd be in our kitchen. I've done a post about that here, although things are significantly different now that I should probably do another post on that! Oh well, stay tuned I guess!

Trash to Treasure: Kustom Bathroom Scale

This is another one of those projects I have had hanging around forever! Just like the TV-quarium project, I have had this old bathroom scale on the back burner for years. Literally, like 10 years. 

It had been a wedding present to my in-laws back in 1960. After a while it got too rusty and grungy to be in the bathroom and they had it sitting in the garage. I asked if I could have it, since we have a pink and black bathroom and it would match. I knew it would take a lot of work to get back to being usable, so I just stored it in the basement for a -long- time.

For all those years, my main concern was that I wasn't able to find the "correct" vinyl to restore the treads- pink textured with sparkles (!). I would have settled for just plain pink upholstery vinyl, but I could never find just the right shade to match the tile and the pink paint I already had.

Then I saw a great bathroom scale restoration done by the folks over at the Hepcats Restorations blog (thanks guys!) using black step tread material, and finally had my lightbulb moment! I didn't have to find original vinyl, I could do something a little different.

So we disassembled it, peeled off the old vinyl and stripped the paint.

The back got a coat of Rustoleum textured matte black and some new rubber feet. 

The top got several coats of pink paint. Notice the strip of original vinyl on the right, and how closely the pink matches! My husband used to be an auto body tech, so he did the prep and painting- much better than I could have done!

I masked off the shoulders and a strip on the front to leave the original chrome. Then I smoothed out the edges with a little pinstripe. Cleaned up the dial and painted the wheel and the "Detecto" emblem with black. 

Since I was going to be able to cut the tread material to whatever design I wanted, I decided to have a little fun with it and do a flame pattern. I did need to cover the holes in the top, so I had to take that into account when cutting the treads.

So here it is! Another item crossed off the to-do list, and a fun weekend project. Might even make stepping on the scale enjoyable!