A Valuable Lesson And New Word Learned

As you know, Darrell very much appreciates the romance of a chandelier, however, it has to be said, that he has had one décor disaster that has been an elephant in our bedroom for quite a while, until yesterday that is, when it all got too much for his sensibilities of a Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen type nature, with him deciding that he simply had to do something about the abomination.

When he first came up with the idea of colouring the droplets and cups with assorted permanent marker pens, the colours were quite solid and vibrant and with the addition of pink bead chains taken from a similar charity shop light shade, it was all rather bohemian. However, over time all the colours had faded and it became quite obvious that it was an amateur effort, which in turn caused Darrell great embarrassment. Previous efforts to remove the colour has proved futile and he'd just let it hang.

So what to do?  Well, the chandelier was duly stripped, after Darrell suddenly remembered (the night before in bed), that he'd got a bag of genuine glass droplets and beads at the back of a cupboard that he might be able to use in place of the old plastic ones.  His little heart rose ...... and then immediately sank.
 

What about the offending candle cups? He'd tried to clean them before but to no avail, so he set about looking for replacements on eBay, which is where he discovered that the cups actually had a very evocative technical name, to wit, bobeche!  Darrell was very impressed on learning this "professional" sounding term, but all the bobeche he found were glass and tres tres expensive for just one, aghhhh.

In desperation Darrell felt that all he could do now was soak his bobeche in a bowl of almost neat bleach ......

...... saying his prayers and crossing everything on his body that could possibly be crossed in this last ditch effort. Then he went to Iceland (the shop, not the country) for a few bits and pieces, as he knew he'd only be poking about in the bowl, if left to his own devices, waiting for them to "turn".

Upon his return and with the help of a generous squirt of Jiff and a scouring pad he was indeed triumphant.  Let's just say it was emotional and tears were shed.

All that was left to do was to reassemble the light fitting amid more tears of relief and joy.  He'd done it, the chandelier had been returned to beyond it's former glory, now being 50% glass, rather than 100% plastic ......

...... with Darrell vowing to never, ever tinker again, especially with a Sharpie .....

...... but, if he were to find another light fitting with similar glass pendants, well then he wouldn't be adverse to stripping it down in order to add a few more drops to his restored one!  Heaven help me, I doubt my poor, jangled nerves could stand it!

Word of the week .....

Bobeche: a usually crystal collar on a candle socket used to catch drippings or hold suspended pendants.