The chandelier that started it all
It started with a chandelier. When I was 22 and fresh out of college, had just signed a lease for my first apartment as a broke post-grad living in the Bay Area. Having always wanted a chandelier in my bedroom, my generous mother had gifted me a wrought iron chandelier from Pottery Barn for me to hang. The only problem was, the chandelier was hard-wired (meaning does not plug into an outlet), and there was no ceiling fixture for me to affix the chandelier to. So, I did what any Bay Area DIY-er would do: I called my friend who was an electrical engineer and took him to Home Depot. We fused the hardwire cord to an extension cord with a toggle switch that would plug into a wall socket and I was up and running. The chandelier hung proudly in my bedroom until a year later, when I moved out and was headed to Chicago.
My Chicago Dearborn apartment was anything but glamorous. A small studio in the back of a run down building with a window A/C unit. But I had an extra window and a “patio”, also known as the fire escape. Once my possessions were delivered I started nesting immediately, and unpacked the chandelier. I knew I needed to drill into the ceiling to install a hook it would hang from, but what I didn’t realize was that in old apartment buildings, ceilings are often made of concrete. I walked down the street to the neighborhood hardware store, rented an industrial drill, bought a bit made for concrete, ready to commence my second run at hanging this chandelier. When I got home, I realized my step-stool didn’t get me enough height to be close enough to the ceiling to get the leverage I needed. I dug through my closet, found my tallest pair of high heels, grabbed my oversized sunglasses to use as googles, and the chandelier was hanging in no time.
About a year and a half later it was time to move again. How was the chandelier going up this time? I wasn’t feeling the industrial drill route on this go-around, so I decided to change it up with gorilla glue. The packaging said it could hold 20lbs, which was enough, so why not give it a try. I purchased white cord concelear covers and adhered it to the ceiling and down the crease of the wall directed towards an outlet for the cord to run. The chandelier hung over my bed for two years until the night before I started packing to move out, when it completely detached from the ceiling and came crashing down on my bed.
The Churchill condo was the last residence for the chandelier, and this time around I was finally able to have an electrician properly wire it in to the ceiling. But that meant one thing: my rough electrical engineering fix would be cut, never to be plugged into an electrical outlet again. I said goodbye to the shrink-wrap bond from the hardwire to the extension cord, and up the chandelier went hanging proudly in the master bedroom.
The chandelier has lived an eventful life. Now, it’s safely back in my childhood bedroom hanging from a proper hook in a room that doesn’t have a hardwire ceiling fixture.
