It only took four years for me to get up the nerve to hang this pier mirror! You can't tell from the photo but it is seven feet tall and four feet wide! We also hung the ginormous Craigslist chandelier, which is five feet tall and four feet wide and a reproduction train station clock casing, also found on Craigslist, which is four feet tall and 14 feet long! You can see the reflection of the chandelier and the clock casing in the mirror.
This is what the chandelier looked like in the Craigslist ad. I paid $100 but it retails for $7,000! You read that right! So, what did I do with a $7,000 chandelier? I cut it up with a pipe cutter, of course! Off came the huge curlycues, down came the giant crystals (bigger than my hand)!
I can't put my finger on it, but this chandelier was a little bit too much, too something. However, I saw the lines of an Empire chandelier underneath it all!
If you remember, I bought 500 feet of chandelier crystal from China. I waited to paint and add the crystal until the chandelier was hanging because it was so big I could not move it out the door to spray paint it! Instead, I will climb a ten foot ladder and brush the gold paint on then hang the crystals! I already added white beeswax candle sleeves, which gives the chandelier some much needed levity!
This is the inspiration for the chandelier transformation.
More on this as it develops!
A view of the bank of windows, to which I added a six foot long zinc architectural salvage element.
The five foot tall Bouguereau painting can be seen above the armoire to the left.
Here is the reproduction clock case I found on Craigslist. It is fourteen feet long! The ad said twelve, so I thought I could fit it in my SUV, albeit with it hanging out the back. I have never been more mistaken! You should have see the look on the faces of the men at the loading dock! I called my trusted mover, Julian Collins, from JC Enterprises in Chicago and he was there within the hour to rescue me!
When the contractor hung this, we realized that the Craigslist ad dimensions were off by two feet. Too long. The contractor cut the ends off, removed the excess, then reattached them. It extends the entire length of the wall.
The clock case was custom made as a prop for a store opening in Chicago. It is fabricated of fiberglass and metal plumbing pipe, then painted in a faux copper finish.
So excited that everything is finally coming together!
Handsome Husband is excited because he no longer has to walk around a five foot tall chandelier, a fourteen foot long clock case, a five foot tall painting, a six foot long piece of architectural salvage and a seven foot tall mirror propped on the wall!
He is waltzing around giddily like Julie Andrews on the mountaintop in the Sound of Music!
So much SPACE!
Do you have that one thing that you have been putting off?
xo
Andie