Before we bought Bardmony, Chris and I had only ever bought relatively modern houses. These are generally fairly straightforward in terms of what’s included and what’s not: fireplaces and wired-in light fittings are generally considered fixtures and remain, and window treatments are generally considered fittings and go with the seller. Carpets are anyone’s guess – we’ve heard stories of them going either way – but I digress…
Bardmony, as you may expect, had different considerations – namely, that some traditional “fixtures” had genuine sentimental value for the sellers (perhaps having been in the family for many years or having been acquired by a relative specifically) and some traditional “fittings” had no use outside of the context of this specific house because they were made to measure. For these reasons, we ended up taking possession of a house with a full complement of lovely vintage drapes (super convenient!) but with a few rooms lacking light fixtures (and having no lighting elements whatsoever) that we needed to sort out.
We moved in during the late part of July, and as the house sits at approximately the same latitude as Helsinki, the rooms without lighting were initially a bit of a funny quirk and not much of an inconvenience. For a while, we got by with lamps – but after a few months of that, as winter drew in and the sunlight hours diminished, we decided enough was enough and it was imperative to start hunting for suitable light fittings.
The room that most urgently needed light fittings was the study: it is a room that sees daily use and had no other source of lighting (and perhaps most importantly, my eyes are absolute rubbish 😅), so it became Job Number One.
As one does when looking for something entirely random or one-off, I went on an eBay hunt.
One complicating factor for this room was that it required 4 (yes, 4!) matching light fittings – and they needed to be of the wall sconce variety, as there is no overhead wiring. Finding 4 period-sympathetic wall sconces that I didn’t find offensive proved a bit tricky – but I was eventually successful:
Luckily, Chris is very handy and made short work of wiring these in – though they did trip the fuse box a few times while he worked through their “we’re really old and are a bit cranky!” kinks.
Here is a photo of the lights in the study shortly after installation:
Since we finished lighting the study, we have acquired some additional light fittings for the master bedroom and the drawing room, where some wall sconces were also removed before sale. They’re cleaned up and ready for wiring in, and I’ll be sure to share them with you when we get to those rooms 😁
Stay tuned for Part III in the Study series – I’ll be taking you through the process of stripping and refinishing the walls, which were BEYOND interesting (get excited – we learned some really neat things about the history of the house from this process).
Take care, folks! x