My vintage schoolhouse light is up (and it’s pretty!)

Remember my vintage schoolhouse light I found for just $20? Yes, for about the cost of a take-out dinner, I took home this awesome fixture with a milk-glass shade. I still can’t believe my luck! Especially when a new fixture like this would cost $160+.

It was time that it made it’s way up onto our kitchen ceiling to replace this white and shiny brass ceiling fan. Ugly and definitely not our style. But before we could do that, the fixture needed help.

While I would have loved to keep the original finish, it wasn’t in good shape. Lots of rust and some white paint spatters. It needed a paint job and quick.

I wadded up some paper to protect the inside of the fixture and the small hole for the tension screw that holds the glass shade in place. Then I sprayed with a coat of rusty surface primer and when that was dry, a coat of oil-rubbed bronze.

The fixture required some simple rewiring, which my dad took care of for me. (Really, all he did was take out the old wires and reconnected two new ones.) After that, it was ready to go up!

Once it was installed on the ceiling, I needed to touch up the silver screws used to mount the fixture. I used up the last of the oil-rubbed bronze spray paint when painting the fixture and didn’t want to buy a whole new can just for two screws.

I found some dark brown paint in my stash and that was a close enough match (especially up near the ceiling) and touched them up in about two minutes.

Before we had the light up, I was a little concerned about how bright it would be. The old ceiling fan didn’t give off a ton of light, and it had three bulbs. The schoolhouse fixture only had one socket for one bulb, so I bought the highest wattage CFL I could find — 150 W equivalent (really uses 40W). Only one bulb, but surprise! It’s actually much brighter than the ceiling fan was. Must be how the glass shade diffuses the light.

So clean and simple, it looks like it’s always been there! That really is the best outcome, isn’t it?

(The rest of the kitchen…eh. It’s OK. The layout works well, but the finishes are different than I might have chosen. Still, it’s not horrible, and it will probably be a long while before any of it changes.)