Week 7 – The Crapshoot

Here we are at week 7, the final week of my Dining Room project for the One Room Challenge. (I updated via Instagram for Week 6, but didn’t make a post for the blog, It was either write or “do.” I chose to put a post on IG and save time and INSTEAD fish or cut bait on the chandelier/lighting project.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Start here.

The Week 6 post would have been about recovering the dining room chairs with the beautiful, colorful, and playful Chinoiserie fabric I ordered from Spoonflower, working with textile artist Danika Herrick. Many of the Spoonflower artists will recolor or customize their designs upon request…for anyone, not just ORC participants. Ms Herrick recolored the background of her “Party Leopards in the Forest” design to black at my request, and recolored some of the pagodas to shades of green and blue. I loved the playful leopards with their party hats and bow ties, and the lanterns hanging in the background among the more traditional Chinoiserie elements. in general, I try not to take myself too seriously and this print is a great reflection of that spirit.

But THIS post is all about crapshoots, rolling the dice, giving it a whirl…and with that, a fairly significant chance of me getting this far then ultimately failing at the challenge. “Failing” in the sense that I’m not a muralist, just someone who can draw her eyebrows every day and has enough art knowledge to be dangerous to herself. Arrogant enough to give it a try with thoughts like “it’s leaves on a stem, how hard can it be?”

I played around with paints and brushes and quickly rediscovered that painting motifs on on a wall is MUCH more difficult than decorative painting on mailboxes or wood cut outs.

But here’s the thing: if I fail, I can always sand the walls and paint them, or buy some wallpaper, and admit I’m NOT a muralist. Back in my working years, my office mate used to say that the only people who don’t make mistakes are the people who don’t DO anything. So, as it says on my homepage, succeed or fail, I’ll let you know. I won’t cover the walls in fairy lights, but I will start decorating for the holidays and have a little laugh at my own very public expense.

But that’s not the ONLY crapshoot for the week. There’s a little matter of replacing the chandelier. I’ve hinted that I had something up my sleeve, and as things evolve, I won’t know until the last day or so of the challenge IF my “something” will or won’t work.

I love the chandelier that I used on my mood board, although I didn’t love that many of the crystals were a golden color, versus clear. I also appreciated many other designs with a wide range of prices… and the good news is that if my hare-brained idea doesn’t pan out as I hope, I know there are other options out there. Again, not in time for the end of the challenge, but that’s okay. There’s no death penalty for failure. This is the One Room Challenge, not Squid Game.

I’ll let YOU in on the secret plan. Come closer.

Last year we sold the home that belonged to my late in-laws. You may have seen some of the posts where I updated their powder room and, as we tore out their damaged carpet, recovered the stairs. One of the real estate agents also mentioned updating some of the fixtures in the house. So, one of the other things I did was replace their light fixture in the dining room with something that might be more appealing to a young buyer.

The fixture in the dining room was a brass chandelier that they were so proud of. I remember my mother in law talking about it with great affection: a vintage fixture with cast flower-shaped bobeches and clear crystal drops. I kept the chandelier after I took it down and thought–if I couldn’t find a use for it–I might turn each of the drops into Christmas ornaments and offer them to the family.

I thought about their chandelier when I was planning the room, but the scale of our dining room suggested a larger fixture. (The guideline is to add the width of the room to the length, and that number, in inches, is the ideal size of a room’s fixture. For dining rooms, an additional consideration is the width of the table minus 12″.). So their 21″ chandelier would unfortunately be a little too small for our room. Not to mention that it needs some work..

But….what if I could add a shade to it? Similar to the inspiration chandelier, there are many lovely chandeliers that feature shade surrounds… A little research yielded that I could easily find an additional 10″ of width by adding a shade.

However, 30″ shades are hard to find…but there is a custom fabricator.

This post will now start reading like a favorite Remy Charlip book from my grammar school days:

What good luck! I might be able to add a shade!

What bad luck! The chandelier isn’t really very tall either.

What good luck! Someone listed a nearly identical one on Facebook Marketplace.

What bad luck! I’d have to find some way to take each of them apart, recombine them and rewire it to accommodate the shade.

What good luck! I am overconfident and fearless!

What bad luck! I would have to rewire and combine two chandeliers that LOOK very similar, but are assembled in very different ways.

What good luck! I am a very hardheaded, optimistic person who really LOVES the idea of cleaning, polishing, retooling and reusing my in-laws chandelier and am NOT willing to “so easily” give up on this.

Spoiler alert: If you know the book, it ends with fewer bad luck turns and more good ones… 🤞🏼

SO…I have taken a leap of faith in my hard headedness and put my full confidence in the supremely cool possibility of giving new life to their chandelier, under which we enjoyed many nights of card and board games and lovely celebrations in my in-laws house, and I’m hoping they would be pleased and it will be something Mr will enjoy.

For now… scrub, scrub, scrub:

The shade will arrive on Monday, and I have my fingers crossed first that it will fit the specifications I’m predicting with my “newly acquired chandelier combining skills” AND, second, that the efforts of my crash course in wiring won’t leave me….well… in the dark (“or electrocuted,” as my skeptical mother would add).

Hey, go big or go home. Just try not to do it so publicly.