I've been looking at lighting catalogues for ages, especially the pieces at Barnlight Electric Company. I plan to accessorize our building with their pendants and goosenecks, powder coated in a zippy color (chartreuse). You can spend many, many thousands of dollars on fixtures or you can go to Home Depot for the cheap made-in-China crap that builders put in apartments without a thought. It's hard to justify spending a lot on a laundry room light, but I've decided that the exterior needs to shine and it also needs to be cohesive so the building doesn't look like a yard sale. But the interior, especially the utilitarian first floor, offers a little more opportunity for creative license. Still, I'm determined to make deliberate and interesting choices and lately my favorite place to look is our local salvage shop, where perfectly good items go to find a second home after a Seattle owner decides to tear down that historic craftsman and build a duplex. Phil is skeptical, and he's right to think there's a ton of outright garbage at these places, but there are also pretty pieces, some with stories, and I've looked at enough lighting websites to know that this industrial pendant was a bargain at $20. Even if it turns out it needs new wiring...it's an old porcelain enamel fixture with a sturdy galvanized steel stem for twenty dollars. Bargain
I've been looking at lighting catalogues for ages, especially the pieces at Barnlight Electric Company. I plan to accessorize our building with their pendants and goosenecks, powder coated in a zippy color (chartreuse). You can spend many, many thousands of dollars on fixtures or you can go to Home Depot for the cheap made-in-China crap that builders put in apartments without a thought. It's hard to justify spending a lot on a laundry room light, but I've decided that the exterior needs to shine and it also needs to be cohesive so the building doesn't look like a yard sale. But the interior, especially the utilitarian first floor, offers a little more opportunity for creative license. Still, I'm determined to make deliberate and interesting choices and lately my favorite place to look is our local salvage shop, where perfectly good items go to find a second home after a Seattle owner decides to tear down that historic craftsman and build a duplex. Phil is skeptical, and he's right to think there's a ton of outright garbage at these places, but there are also pretty pieces, some with stories, and I've looked at enough lighting websites to know that this industrial pendant was a bargain at $20. Even if it turns out it needs new wiring...it's an old porcelain enamel fixture with a sturdy galvanized steel stem for twenty dollars.