Chandelier restoration
Chandeliers always give a touch of elegance to any home, thus they are quite popular in most homes. However, there are various things that may diminish the elegant beauty of chandeliers, thus they need restoration from time to time. Some of the factors that may facilitate chandelier restoration are accumulated dirt or grime, rusting or chipped metal as well as missing lampshades and crystals. Chandelier restoration can be one of the most difficult tasks in the home, due to the fact that most chandeliers are very fragile. In order to restore chandeliers to their original splendour, there are basic procedures that need to be followed in order to ensure that they are preserved.
The first step when restoring a chandelier is to disconnect it from its power source, so as to make its restoration easier and safer. The chandelier should be placed on a towel in order to protect it from scratches or breakage. Afterwards, the chandelier should be dismantled, placing its components such as bulbs, crystals and shades on a separate towel. The chandelier’s metallic part ought to be examined for chipped paint or rust. If there is any rust, it can be scrapped off using steel wool. The chandelier should then be sanded to its base metal and cleaned with warm soapy water. An anti-corrosion primer should then be applied and given around 24 hours to dry up, after which it should be painted using a metallic finish. The chandelier’s screws should be checked for rust, replacing the rusted screws with new ones.
Chandelier crystals should be cleaned in warm soapy water and rinsed in clean water. They should then be dried with a rag and placed on a towel. Special attention should be given to crystals which have many different pendants. It would be advisable to take digital photographs of the pendants prior to dismantling the chandelier. This will help to avoid confusion when reassembling the chandelier, particularly if they have different shapes and sizes. Crystal pendants having the same size and shape should be cleaned and stored separately, which will make it easy to restore them to their correct positions. One can refer to the digital photographs in order to ensure that they have all been hanged properly. This way, missing pendants can be identified and replaced.
The lamp shades and light bulbs should be cleaned using a damp sponge and dried immediately. If necessary, the chandelier’s body can also be cleaned with warm soapy water and then dried and polished as required. Once all the parts have been cleaned, the chandelier can be reassembled, ensuring all its parts are in place. Before restoring the chandelier to its position, it would be essential to check on its wiring. This entails checking the wiring for rusty wire connections and decayed insulation. It may be necessary to cut off the wire ends as well as peel back insulation, in order to create new connections. The new connections should be secured with wire nuts and wrapped using electrical tape. After reconnecting the ground wire, the chandelier may finally be returned to its position, fully restored.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Old Fashioned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.