We real cool... We skip school...

AND if you can finish that poem, you get 50, yes 50 points!!!! So far, Nick (a man who believes in buying in bulk) is leading in points with 10 total.

So, back to the blog. I was going to title today's entry as Schoolhouse Rocks or Too Cool for School but everyone uses those. It's just not creative (or crazy) enough for me. As a friend in high school once yelled at me in an angry lack of understanding, "M'elle, WHY WHY do you always have to be SO DIFFERENT from everyone else?!!! Can't you just be normal?!!"

No. Sorry. It's not my thing. I think she was just PMS-ing that day anyway.

Anyway, really now, back to the blog.

Perhaps my light fixtures would have behaved like the poem above, or perhaps they actually did skip school. You see, these are what are commonly called "school house" style globes with the fixtures. They are more utilitarian and were commonly found in schools (no, really?!), courthouses and other public buildings. They are a little more 1920's than 1910's, but hey, we are going to have appliances in our kitchen. That's not very 1910's either.

These fixtures were found in my dear in-laws store in Pike county. My husband said he remembered something like this in the basement of the store, so he went a-hunting and here we are! I was elated when he brought them to me. I couldn't have bought better ones!

The larger of the two was as black as black could be on the metal part. After an hour with some Brasso and elbow grease, it looks as it does now - copper! Some of the brass started to show through, so I had to stop scrubbing, but I like the aged look it has. The smaller of the two would probably polish up similarly, but the fitter ring is completely rusted and it needs rewiring (they both probably do, but the wiring on this one is broken), so I have put off scrubbing it until I decide to search for another fixture to go with the globe or take it to the "light man" at the antique mall to see what can be done.

The largest fixture will go in the middle of the kitchen. White globes of this shape and size were good for diffusing light evenly over a room (and they had to deal with those carbon filament bulbs), so this is why they were used in places like school houses and public buildings where efficiency was sought. They are "green" or "energy star efficient" by today's standards, I suppose. The little fixture will go in the laundry room where a fluorescent fixture glares down from a plaster ceiling. So, maybe going from the fluorescent to this fixture isn't as green as I thought, but I can put one of those curly bulbs in it to make up for that.

See, that got kinda wordy and boring. But hey, you learned something new today I bet!

On a side note, I am looking for a place or website that might have old or reproduction finials and metal decor for light fixtures such as this. I know all about rejuvenation.com, which is fabulous in helping to guide one in what fixtures would best represent a remuddled old house, but they don't have finials for sale, that I can tell.