Doing up houses has been our obsession for a long time and got me to wonder. Why not do up a chandelier? By which I do not mean restoration that is best left to professionals, but making a tired chandelier look real good if not stunning. Following my thoughts I went to a car boot sale to look for a suitable candidate. Low and behold I have found one.

I have looked at it for a while to see what could be done and any visual defects. Apart of an inch thick layer of dust and one missing crystal I couldn’t see any.

Weighing up of the purchase cost, money I would have to spend and time needed to do all of this was interrupted by the conversation of my son with the very rude seller: “ Your mum can’t be very clever if she doesn’t think it is worse £6.” Offended I have paid up and left.

Now for the acid test – my husband’s reaction when I show him. And I wasn’t disappointed, his face dropped and without any lip movement it said: “What did you buy this for?” So before he could do any verbal expressing I have explained my plan and rolled up my sleeves.

First of all I hung it on a rail to avoid any further damage. Next I carefully removed all crystals and put all of them into a bowl of hot, reasonably soapy water to soak. I still find the simple washing up liquid method the best as many products that are specifically marketed for cleaning chandeliers leave residual film to which dust actually sticks to. I have this information straight from the horse’s mouth as I have been looking into selling Chandelier cleaning products and this is what the distributor actually told me. To ease the dirt of the crystals I use a soft brush, washing up brush is my favourite at the moment. Rinsing is very important and I use hot water with only few drops of vinegar as vinegar corrodes any metal parts it comes in contact with. 4 hours later I had what I started with, but sparkling clean. And for the transformation I used crystals I made redundant after purchasing pink crystals for my daughter’s chandelier to compliment her bedroom’s colour scheme. A simple change for larger, higher quality or different colour crystals is the easiest way to achieve a quick and effective transformation. We at Classical Chandeliers are happy to advise and supply any crystals you can see on our website. I played around with the crystals linking pieces to make different length and after a while and came up with a design I was happy with.

Was this a successful ‘ doing up’? I shall let you be the judge as I very well know that beauty is only in the eye of the beholder.