Updating Brass Ceiling Fans With Paint and Light

Last week there was a real cliffhanger here at the Ranch when I left the story hanging on what lights I picked from Parrot Uncle (you can read about that here).

I would have liked any of the inexpensive vintage lights I showed you in the collage below....

However there was a project I already intended to tackle with black paint.

The light bulb went on and I got the bright idea that in addition to paint, updating with discount hanging lights would really be a bright idea!

So today I'm going to show you how the brassy thing on the left married the short dark handsome cagey one on the right, and how they were both left hanging.

The complimentary light fixtures I chose from Parrot Uncle arrived in about a week - two boxes taped together to look like one - and inside each were the 5 light fan-ish cage looking ones.

Two Hunter ceiling fans have been hanging in our family room for over 20 years.

Over the course of those years the fan blades had been cleaned a few times, but not the top of the brass part.

If I live here for another 20 years I'm apologizing now to whomever buys this house, because there is a high probability that they will find the same amount of dust on top of these fans as I did.

I got the vacuum out to suck up the dust I could see, then I took the fans apart and cleaned out the insides.

Obviously no one in my house has a dust allergy.

The fans were typical of the mid 90's, just basic, and we do actually use them in summer when I'm too stubborn to turn on the air conditioning.

Or in the winter when smoke from some burned food wafts into the family room airspace.

The usual style fan blades with wood grain and antique brass hardware, all lined up and getting a couple coats of flat black paint.

Ten blades, five from each fan.

I was liking both the blades and the tops better already.

I think ceiling fans have gotten a bad rap thanks to a certain TV decorating show years ago, but we like our fans - probably because they actually get used - and we like them much better now with their redo of paint and lights!

With a little bit of wiring in the area where a light kit would normally hang, Brawn attached the new lights to the old fans.

Hanging any light is a chore, but doing it standing on a ladder 20 feet in the air, well I have to thank him for that.

I haven't been able to convince him to set up scaffolding and give the beams either a coat of paint or a new stain color.

In fact his comment at that suggestion was "feel free to have at it".

We didn't have lights on either fan before - we didn't think the walk way area below needed additional lights when we built the house.

We were wrong!

This weekend we used the lights twice and I was really happy to have the additional illumination.

I'm very happy with the way the paint changed the look of the ceiling fans, and how the light was married to them.

I think they look great.

The lights from Parrot Uncle make doing updates affordable and I've still got my eye on those glass bell shade lights, I may have to treat my house to another update.

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