That "Listening Lounge" I wanted for the back room has turned into more of a Lounge/Home-Office with a mix of Industrial and Space Age design - a break from the hippie/groovy wood and orange and brown rest of the house.
*Flamesuit-On* I've broken the golden rule of MCM by using some reproductions, but I kinda needed to. Besides, there's another rule that goes along the lines of:
"The best way to pull off artificial plants is to mix real ones in with them."
And that's what I've done in a sense.
Overhead lighting is an original 1930s Kurt Versen Saturn pendant. I broke another rule there too, because I know original finishes are desired over refinished, but this lamp's paint was in such bad shape, and I'm almost certain it was leaded to boot, I ended up stripping it down and just shooting it with a few coats of flat white keeping it close to original. Aluminum mount and diffuser were cleaned, but left with original patina. Picked it up on eBay maybe 4 years ago from a seller who salvaged a few of them from a 1930s school that was being torn down in Illinois. Retrofitted a standard e27 socket, but all original wiring and mogul socket are in a bag with content ID.
Pic from original eBay listing (Before):
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And on my ceiling (After):
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Next was a chrome and Lucite pendant lamp I had shipped in from Bulgaria (surprisingly pretty cheap to ship, too). The idea there was to flip it upside down and turn it into a desk lamp for my Space Age computer desk area (Yay! No more computer crap on my dining table! LOL). The most intriguing part was figuring out how I was going to get it to be a desk lamp. I started mentally going through the electrical aisles at my local hardware store, piecing together in my mind a suitable base for it.
But then it dawned on me; just get the cheapest donor lamp Amazon Prime will deliver to use as a donor for base/socket/wiring/switch. Six bucks in amazon warehouse deals was all it took for the solution there! Way better than cobbling something together! LOL
Pic from eBay listing (Before):
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And after. Chrome cleaned, Lucite polished with some 3M microfininshing on the inside to get most of that yellowing out, then hit all over with a little Novus #1 plastic treatment, base/socket installed with a crystal clear 80W eqv. LED 'corn' bulb. Again, all original wiring/socket is kept in a labeled bag.
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Over on the opposite wall from the computer desk/office is the 'Lounge' area. I've shown pics of these reproduction Eames bent-plywood table and chairs before somewhere in a thread (maybe this one) but here they are in their intended location. Please forgive the lack of curtains, they're in process. Until Wednesday of last week, this back bedroom was a giant walk-in (toss-in) closed door storage room that housed all the boxes of stuff I didn't want to deal with when I first moved to this house 4 years ago. The desk arrived, and lit the fire under me to go ahead and see how this room developed. That lamp has been mentioned in this thread earlier. It's a late 40s-early 50s Nelson bubble on its original teak and iron tripod. Wiring, socket, and plug were in good condition for their age, so they were not replaced. Inside is the only CFL bulb left in the house. I think is works nicely with the table and chairs and maybe even helps them not look so reproductiony.
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There's more to this room, and it's coming together nicely (I'm sitting in it now as I type this), but it's still in process because I can't justify putting up pics of the rest of the area until it looks exactly how I want it. There's still some Op Art for the walls to go up and a table that's being shipped down from my mom's house, so we'll save the rest for a future post. But it's taking shape and gonna be awesome, I can tell you that! LOL