July 25th and into July 26th: Trim and a chandelier

I spent Sunday night catching up on trim in the house. I put ceiling trim up around the living room and dining room and trimmed out the window in the dining room. I think the walls only look completed if there is a divide between the wall and ceiling. Guess I am destined for crown molding in RL, eh? I also painted the ceiling medallion for the dining room and I have great plans for it!


While flipping through some pictures of dining rooms on BHG's website (www.bhg.com) I came across a fabulous idea for a candle chandelier! They had a lovely piece of black wood suspended from chains directly over the table, and on this board were dozens of white pillar candles. It was amazing! I just knew it was something that I would have to reproduce in the Highland.




I decided to go with a rustic round design, instead of the steel clean lines the original designer used. I used a top to a single serve yogurt container as a template. When I had installed the diagonal wood floor the day before, it needed some trimming. The scrap from that was exactly the right size to wrap around the outside of the lid. I secured it with white tacky glue. Once it was dried, I flipped it over and laid craft sticks across it. I then trimmed them to fit the circular pattern and glued them into place. After this application was finished drying, I stained and washed the wood. It first got a coat of the same walnut color used on the floors, followed by a coat of mahogany and then a white wash. I had some hemp cord in my pile of goodies and I used this to make 3 like sized braids to act as my rope. After several attempts to fasten them on with tacky glue (and oodles of swearing and grunting and stamping of my little feet) I finally PERMANENTLY secured the ropes with super glue!




Then there was lots and lots of trimming of birthday candles. I cut them into various heights and stripped the top part to expose the wick. Once I had what seemed a respectable amount and they all looked satisfactory, they were glued in place on the base. I glued them in the a randomized fashion around a mirror I had placed in the middle. Once all candles were placed and dried, I poured actual beach sand around them to fill in the space between the candles and the edge of the base.







Now, remember the medallion I painted? I punched a hole in the middle of it and then used a needle threader to pull the hemp cord through and secured it with some super glue. I love it!! It is now permanently suspended from the ceiling in the dining room. Glorious little contraption! I am hoping to get more pictures (better ones, really) when ever we get a new camera.