Brighter Fusion Blog

I bought three Lux clocks separately on eBay, and they’ve been hanging around the house for about a year, so it’s a relief to have them finished.

I put the best parts into two clocks — one for me, and one for my sister. The third is a hideous monstrosity which I’ll probably give away…or I might do something worthwhile with it after a while.

You can find these clocks refinished on eBay for a lot, or in found condition for pretty cheap. If you’re looking, see if you can find one nearby to you, because these are monsters to pack for shipping. You can pop the wood tips off, but you really don’t want to do that if you can help it.

Enough ado. Here’s the finished product:

My sister’s has been finished for several weeks. It’s very similar to this one, except there is only one face plate (glossy lavender), the hands retain their original brass plating, and there is a fun, squiggly second hand, painted dark red (OSHA red).

I was thinking of making this tone-on-tone in red-orange on dark red, but I can’t find a red-orange spray paint (except for fluorescent). I want that 60s color of electric red, as seen in Star Trek TOS. I can get a can of latex custom made to match any color sample (such as a vintage enamel pan) and then use a Preval sprayer, but that’s a lot of expense and work and it doesn’t have the same reproducability that commercial spray paint has. OSHA red seemed pretty nice for the dark red.

So, forget the red. Instead it’s aqua blue with an off-white center accent, ala the Chevy Bel Air from the 50s (only not as green an aqua, and no chrome):

After the jump, more pics and details about the project.

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Buy my Drexel head-of-the-table dining room armchair on eBay now for …. $290! OMG!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230203173644

Sure it’s nice, but jeez!

Plus it’s not teak. It’s walnut. The Declaration stuff was all walnut (that I’ve ever seen or heard of).

I’ve seen my coffee table go for $600 too. Unreal.

It stresses me out to think how much this stuff is worth today. So I pretty much don’t think about it. Most of the stuff is in the garage with sharp implements leaning against it. It’s wrapped in bubble wrap and saran wrap, and I really hope the plastic doesn’t stick to the finish and ruin it. The house is too small and full of stuff to put the tall buffet, dining table, and coffee table inside. The short buffet I’m using as a dresser, and the six chairs are scattered around the house.

The upside to freezing-ass cold weather is lots of time at home to finish up stalled projects.

I’ve been keeping this half-finished globe lamp hanging around for months. I bought the globe from my favorite junk store in Longmont for around $5. It was a bargain because the lens inside which was supposed to focus light on a point of the globe was dangling around in the wrong place. Happy find for me!

I could have easily epoxied it to work the way it was supposed to, but I actually have a second globe which is an exact twin to this one that I inherited from Grandpa (with the aforementioned furniture), and it works as intended.

So I felt easier about destroying this one as a functional visual aid. One probably shouldn’t study it too closely anyway. It’s from 1980.

It gives off a lovely, relaxing orange glow, like a fireplace — a super nice mood lamp!

I finished the wiring, but I still need to make an insert for the hole on the bottom and the ornament for the pull chain. It’s going to be a moon, because I’m just that nerdy. In fact, I’ve been searching for a realistic moon Christmas ornament to use, but they’re all man-in-the-moon or crescent moon motifs (or man-in-the-crescent-moon).

I could easily make a 2-D one by printing out a moon photo, but that would suck. So, I finally bought a big wooden bead and I’ll have to paint it gray and hand paint some craters on it.

Let’s hope we don’t live to see the moon hovering over the South Pole like this one will!

Hi all.

This is a project I completed several weeks ago, but didn’t get around to posting.

I was extremely fortunate to inherit some nice walnut Danish modern furniture from my grandfather’s estate when he died. These originally belonged to his second wife, Lillie, and she took excellent care of them.

In addition to the chairs, I have a dining table, large square coffee table, and two-piece china hutch. All pieces are from the same line — “Declaration” by Drexel. They are dated from 1959 through 1963.

Classic and gorgeous!!

The chairs have had this whitish upholstery, with accents of peach and mint green, since I acquired them, and I expect since the early 90s.

I removed the pastel fabric, and found what appears to the original early 1960s fabric, a harvest scene on velvet, in PRISTINE condition:

Over which I put my new, retro-style, fuzzy polka dot fabric (which I affectionately call “hideous orange”). Notice the same color palette in the new (left) and the original (right):

And Sandy sez, “What’s so hideous about being orange anyway?”

I really like the new fabric — it’s amazingly soft to the touch, and I feel that it suits the style and color of the wood much better than the peach/mint stuff did.

If anybody wants to see huge, detailed pics (including of the original velvet upholstery) you can do so here:

http://www.brighterfusion.com/blog_images/walnut_chairs/