Something Old is New Again: Repurposing a Vintage Pendant Lamp



Photo by Thomas Underhill. Interior Styling by Victor Underhill

 





Sometimes when you’re faced with a vintage piece that isn’t working for your space, the best thing to do is change things up. Case in point: Our Danish modern pendant lamp.




Lamp in its original configuration as seen in our old house

 

Here’s a photo of the room where our lamp used to live, and it looked great in that space. As you can see, the fixture consisted of a beautiful, horizontal piece of walnut, from which three hand-blown glass pendants were suspended, the center one a bit lower than the others. Try as we might, we couldn’t make this lamp work with the slanted ceilings in our Cliff May Rancho. Its horizontal configuration just didn’t look right.

Disclaimer: We don’t necessarily advocate molesting vintage furniture, décor and artwork, which we compare to cutting up a Picasso and using it for a decoupage project. But this poor lamp had already been through the proverbial ringer. My husband broke the middle pendant by slamming into it with his head (ouch!) when we were in the process of moving out of our last home. We had the pendant replaced by a talented glassblower, Josh Gelfand of Revolution Glass Studio in El Segundo, who did a marvelous job of reproducing the broken shade. So while the lamp looked beautiful again, it was no longer original. This made the decision to change its configuration from horizontal to vertical a bit easier for us. Here’s how we pulled it off.

First, we ordered a pendant fixture from Modernica. It’s designed to suspend George Nelson bubble lamps, but we figured it would work well for our project. We knew where we wanted the lamp to go: in the northeast corner of the room we’ve dubbed “The Salon,” where it would look marvelous from every angle, including looking in from outside on the patio.




Interior stylist The Divine Victor Underhill

 

Our interior stylist, The Divine Victor Underhill, was the brains behind this project. He determined exactly where on the ceiling the repurposed lamp would be located, so that it would be framed by either of the two corner windowpanes when being viewed from outside. Genius, he is.



Determining our arrangement before building the lamp



Before beginning to build the lamp, Victor laid the pendants down inside a large box so that he could determine how he wanted to position them. It was important that the finished configuration look gorgeous but also be constructed in such a way that the pendants wouldn’t smack into each other during an earthquake. (Those of us who live in the Los Angeles area know that earthquakes are a “when” rather than an “if” scenario.) Once he determined the arrangement, it was time to start constructing the lamp.



Almost done!



Truth be told, putting this lamp together wasn’t easy. The instructions were . . . well . . . unclear. Threading the lamp cord through the wooden balls, which were later attached to the metal armature, was difficult, because the cord had a clingy, plastic coating and the holes in the balls were snug. (We ended up having to enlarge the holes slightly by wrapping sandpaper around a pencil and then sanding them from the inside.) Once we had the whole contraption assembled it was heavy, and it took three of us to hold it—working hard to keep the pendants from whacking into each other—while Victor attached the canopy to the ceiling. We also had to take it down a couple of times to adjust the height of the pendants in order to make sure they were properly framed inside the window panes.




Pendant lamp viewed from the patio

 

In the end, all the time and effort was worth it, because, as you can see from the photo at the tip-top of this post, our repurposed pendant lamp is the star of the show in this room. At night, it greets visitors as they approach from the outside. Inside, it’s a show-stopper. We love it. And we know we made the right decision when we changed it up to better suit our needs instead of leaving it as-is and selling it to someone else. No guilt here. It’s all good.

And So it Goes . . . and Goes . . . and Goes . . .

Oh, Readers! I’ve neglected you for so long. We’ve moved, you know, from our temporary rental situation and into our Rancho. Finally. That whole moving business has taken me away from the computer for all these weeks, but then . . . there’s more. Because guess what? The house wasn’t ready for us when we got here.

Our contractor was running behind when we arrived August 7, and here it is a full month later and our house still isn’t finished. When we got here, our home was supposed to be complete with the exception of countertops. Um-hmmmmm. Not so much.



View from the rumpus room through the newly opened wall

We had floors and walls and such, of course. We had a toilet, sink and tub in one bathroom. There were some cabinets in the kitchen—slick glossy-gray ones from Ikea—but we dared not fill them, because their contents would only be covered in construction dust. We had a temporary, $40 aluminum sink in the kitchen and, thanks to a slow delivery from the appliance store, the fridge and microwave the previous owner had left behind. And because we didn’t want our belongings to get damaged during the construction melee, we put most of our stuff in storage. Nice. 



Old microwave in the hole where the new one will be

 Since then, most of our appliances have been installed, save the custom-colored microwave I just had to have. (When you land on the page after clicking on the link, click on the first little color swatch in the second row—“Wasabi”—and you’ll see what we’re waiting on backorder for.) Pretty Ikea light fixtures have been installed above the kitchen island. New toilets are in. Sinks and sink-cabinets, again from Ikea, grace the bathrooms. Some furniture has made its way inside.

More painting has taken place since these photos were taken (by our good friend Tom Underhill, a professional photographer)—in fact, the inside is nearly done. We chose to do the majority of the house in a saturated yellow—a color we had Benjamin Moore paint custom-mixed to match a Behr shade we liked (Feather Gold). Accent walls are done in Olive Moss; ceilings, fireplace and trim in Pure White; and the main beam, upright posts and additional horizontal accents in Soot—all from Benjamin Moore. (The Soot treatment was inspired by photos of original Long Beach Ranchos seen on the Huntington Library’s digital library.) Our painter, Steve Smith of Smith Prep 'N' Paint, has done a magnificent job, as usual. We've worked with him, and only him, for many years.

Estate sale headboard with vintage sconces from Etsy.com

As you can see from the photos—if you look past the clutter—Jeff Jeannette, of Jeannette Architects here in Long Beach, did a marvelous job on the design of the kitchen and in opening up the wall between the two large living spaces. We’re very pleased with the result.

 Next week, we hope to see the installation of our CaeserStone countertops, with one section of the island topped in butcher block. We’ve been waiting a long time, so we’re looking forward to it. We also expect to get our furniture and art placed in the next week or two. Of course, we’ll keep you updated—but this time in a more timely fashion.

The rumpus room: TV will mount above the console; pocket door to the left



It's dirty--but get a load of that terrazzo floor!



Pretty little bathroom



Paint swatches of the main and accent color appear at the right



Renovating Our Mid-Century Home

When we began seriously shopping for our Cliff May Rancho back in January of this year, we’d already seen quite a few examples. Because these homes were built in the early 1950s, a lot of them were in need of more TLC than we were willing to give. Other times, homeowners or, worse, flippers, had updated the Cliff May right out of them.

When we found ours, we knew it was The One. It had been updated, but tastefully. There was an addition between the garage—which faced the street—and the kitchen/living room which, aside from an unsightly fireplace, looked like it belonged. Like most of the Ranchos we’d visited, the original, pony-wall galley kitchen had been replaced with a center-island-based one. (If you’ve never seen an example of an original Long Beach Rancho kitchen, you can find a photo of one here, at the Huntington Digital Library. Just click the “next” link just above the "print" button at the upper-right until you reach the kitchen photos.) Wood floors had been installed over the original vinyl tile. The bathrooms had been updated a bit. And the pony wall between the two, small “Jack and Jill” bedrooms had been removed to create one large, rectangular bedroom. These changes all worked, but it didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to make a few changes of our own. Here’s what we’ve got up our sleeves:

• Creating an entirely new kitchen
• Opening up the wall between the living room and the addition (family room)
• Installing new flooring (terrazzo tile!)
• Replacing the (original) furnace and installing an air-conditioning system
• Removing a second fireplace in the addition
• Relocating the laundry area from the kitchen to the "master" bedroom closet
• Doing some minor bathroom updates
• Installing a tankless water heater
• Replacing a bank of (icky) aluminum slider windows with original casement windows (we hope).

Right now, we’re focusing on the house. Landscaping, including dramatic outdoor lighting (with the exception of some über-cool vintage exterior lights I scored on Etsy), will have to wait until we can save up some more dough. Restoring the birch paneling in the living room and hallway that was either removed or painted over will also have to wait.

To avoid living in a construction zone, we’re renting a house a few blocks away while the renovations take place. The big move-in date is swiftly approaching. Stay tuned as we move forward with our Rancho Romance!

About Cliff May

I can’t remember when I first learned about this neighborhood—the Rancho Estates, commonly referred to as “The Ranchos,” in Long Beach, California. I think I read about it in the Los Angeles Times or maybe Atomic Ranch magazine. It was years ago. But as soon as I knew about it, I insisted my husband, Ric, take me there. It was love at first sight.

On weekends, we’d go to open houses there. I learned that the prettiest Ranchos were designed by Cliff May, a famous architect best known for his sprawling ranch homes. Post-and-beam construction. Open plans. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A seamless merging of the indoors with the outdoors. Gorgeous. I knew I had to have one. And now I do.

So who is this Cliff May? I’ve been asked, so I’m telling, right here in this blog.

Cliff May is widely credited with creating the modern “California ranch-style” home. He was a sixth-generation Californian born in 1908, a horseman, a pilot and a saxophone player. He loved cars and drove fast. He was handsome, too. Most of all, though, he was an architect—an artist, who designed and built more than 1,000 homes and commercial buildings. Cool tidbit? Cliff May was self-taught.

Many of the homes he designed were huge, rambling estates for wealthy clients. (Actress Bea Arthur owns a stunner in Sullivan Canyon.) But he also created a mass-production line he called Cliff May Homes in the early 1950s, which sold affordable designs to builders across the U.S. who produced tracts like the Long Beach Ranchos.

We just missed an exhibit centered on the great Mr. May and his work at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, but there are some yummy images that can still be seen on the museum’s website. The exhibit featured a book that’s available for pre-order now (to be released in September 2012) called “Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House.” I’ve already ordered mine. You?  By the way, here’s a wonderful L.A. Times article about May, the exhibit and the book.

If you need more—and I did—there’s “Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House,” by Daniel P. Gregory, which has some examples of Long Beach Ranchos in it. The eBay seller I bought my copy from suggested another book: “Western Ranch Houses” by Cliff May himself. I don’t have that one yet, but I think I should. I mean, I have one of his houses. I should have one of his books, right?