Installed and working!

By Saturday night these lights were in place. I know they don't look as good as the Rejuvenation fixtures but they certainly are period pieces.







Now, a word of advice for anyone deciding to buy one of these downward pointing bulb type fixtures. When you re-wire it, you need to put a socket on the top portion and leave it "loose" so that a candle type bulb lays flat on the top making it less visible to anyone looking at the fixture. The purpose of this bulb is to reduce the shadow that will be cast on the ceiling if you don't install it! The other trick is to install low wattage bulbs so you aren't fixated on the glare produced by bare light bulbs. I used 40 watt bulbs and they are too bright but I have a dimmer switch on this light so I can dim them to around what 25 watt bulbs would generate. The light emitted from 25 watt bulbs today is about equivalent to a 50 watt bulb from the 1930s. The other solution is to make glass bead shades to hang over the bulbs and dangle down like the headress of the woman in the poster. That would break up the glare. General Electric used to make art deco bulbs for these fixtures called GA bulbs. Once in a while you will run across them. They have a flared yellow tip to diffuse and direct light downwards but the top of the flare and the neck are white to cast light up to the ceiling. They are shaped like a long necked wide bottom vase. They look kind of neat but are actually a product of the 1950s.

Now all I have to do is install the Rejuvenation fixtures in the "Crackhouse" BUT the temperature here is below freezing. The basement of the "Crackhouse" is at 43 degrees, the first floor is 38 degrees, second floor is 33 degrees and the third floor is close to whatever the temperature is outside. It may be a few days, or weeks before I put them in. Let's put this into context. I don't know about the rest of you but I hate working in the cold. It does strange things to my body. My fingers shrink, my feet lose all feeling, my nose runs and my balls shrivel up. That is not a pretty site. You know what prunes look like? Well, my balls look like the stones in those prunes!