Spring is Here and the Chandelier is Done

It’s been over two months since my last post, and you may be wondering, ‘what ever happened to that stairwell renovation?’ The short answer is, winter happened. Boston shut down for most of February as consecutive snow storms dropped a historically unprecedented amount of snow on the city. The public transit system was effectively unusable for more than a month, so I ended up spending a lot of time at home. But even so, it was so dark, and cold, and dreary, that I couldn’t muster the motivation to tackle any major renovation work.

But now spring finally seems to have arrived. We’ve had a handful of warm, sunny days, and the magnolia tree in front of my building bloomed this past week. Gregg, our contractor, has caught up on a backlog of work from the winter, but before he starts working on the stairs he’s taking care of a more pressing project: building new bulkhead doors to the cellar. Over the course of the winter, the old, wooden bulkhead was completely crushed, and when the snow melted – all nine feet of it – all that was left was a pile of boards leaning against the side of the building. Gregg  is currently building a new bulkhead out of pressure treated lumber framing and pine planks. As long as we regularly seal/paint the new bulkhead it should hold up much better than the old one.

Maybe my greatest home-related accomplishment this winter, as sad as that is, was finding two more slip shades to complete the living room chandelier.

As you may remember, I put the complete chandelier together using original parts from the 1930s, most of which I bought on eBay. The total cost for this project ended up being around $250, which included the cost of the cast iron frame and canopy, the slip shades, new cloth-covered wire and sockets, paint, and light bulbs. At $13-35 each, the slip shades themselves were the single biggest expense. Completely refurbished versions of this chandelier seem to go for as much as $1000, so even though it took months to find all the parts I needed, I think it was worthwhile.

With longer days and warmer weather ahead of us, I have a bunch of new projects in the works, in the stairwell and beyond – so stay tuned, for real this time. And since I don’t have any actual updates on the stairwell renovation, I’ll leave you with a picture of a much larger, much fancier stairwell. We just got back from visiting my brother in Baltimore, and this is the stairwell in his building, a formerly-single-family townhouse (really a semi-detached mansion) built in 1850 and lavishly renovated in the 1890s that is now divided into ten spacious apartments.