Terry from the Prairie

 I have always gotten a charge out of figuring out how to solve my own decorating and house repair problems. Most things aren't really hard if you have good directions to follow. Years ago, when I worked at the Psoriasis Foundation I worked with a young guy, a writer, who had just bought an old house and didn't know how to do a thing! And didn't seem too interested in learning. So he spent great piles of his hard-earned salary hiring other people to fix things and upgrade things at his house. One Monday morning at work I mentioned that I had tiled a bathroom counter top that weekend, and he responded, "Well, aren't you just 'Terry from the Prairie!'" I don't even know what that means, but the name stuck. When I get my DIY on, Ray says "Terry from the Prairie strikes again."

He's gonna say that when he gets home tonight.

The old light fixture that I ordered from eBay arrived today. Here it is right out of the box.

The paint was in bad shape and it definitely needed to be rewired. I took it apart and took the socket down to the hardware store and the helpful guy there helped me find replacements, wire, wire nuts and gave me a quick tutorial on rewiring. While I was there I also bought a can of paint stripper and came home and started right in stripping the ugly paint off. I pulled out our ancient Time-Life wiring book and confirmed the instructions given by the hardware guy. The paint came right off and the brass underneath is really pretty! I replaced the old sockets with my newly wired new sockets, put it all back together and now, several hours later it is pretty much ready to hang.

I am wondering what to do about some little glass shades, which I think I would like. The woman at an antique hardware store where I went last week looking for inspiration told me that some fixtures of this style had shades, some did not and the bare bulbs showed. This fixture doesn't have the set screws to hold the little glass shades with the lip at the top. Beth said she has some old fixtures at her beach house that have lightweight glass shades that just hang on the bulb. I bought some glass shades today, but they won't work. I'm going to have to take them back. If anyone has these kinds of fixtures and can send me a photo or tell me about shades I'd really appreciate it. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for.