Out of Plumb

It is raining this evening so continued progress outside is held up. What I did instead was finish the light in the living room. We acquired this old brass chandelier trim plate from the 1930’s from, you guessed it, some auction. It used to have 4 fixed lights around the edge and then a substantially larger hanging light, or at least that is what we assume. Anyway I had always wanted to find a use for it but couldn’t locate a light that would work with it. We don’t have the room to hang one. It sat around until one of our halogen floor lamps died of a bad switch. All of a sudden we had our lamp! Some small copper plumbing fittings and a lot of polishing elbow grease later and we were set. Test runs of the lamp illustrated one big detraction, it was bright. Like sun tan bright. Now a lot of times that is great, the wife loves it for weaving rugs, but other times, like for movies or TV it sucks. Someplace, and I think it was from the scrap brass bins at Pacific Steel, I snagged two brass bathroom light fixture arms. Some careful bending and they were installed through 2 of the 4 small light holes. I used a pair of copper shot glasses from eBay and simple replacement lamp sockets to finish the arms. Allelectroncs.com furnished a 110V relay and a pull chain switch. With the relay wired up, when you pull the switch you can transition between the big light and the 2 small ones. I am darn proud of myself. It’s one of those things that turned out well and looks both fancy and expensive. Let that be a lesson for all the other folks out there, the house of your dreams is just a dumpster dive away!




The living room light is the second light we have built our selves. The dining room is also graced with a Franken-light. This one I built out of scrap aluminum turnings some years ago. It has a little more of a love/hate reaction. Either you like it or you don't. With 8 sockets it can be a bright little beastie, but over a dining room table that is what we wanted. I know it is loaded with mismatched bulbs in this photo but hey, smoke them if you got them.