Dangerous Creativity

(We briefly interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for this announcement because I'm an idiot and forgot to mention it below: Bookviewcafe.com will be launching MERELY MAGIC and my arrival tomorrow by giving away chapters. Stop by and say hi!)

Creativity can be a marvelous thing, but sometimes, it’s danged dangerous.

I’m a house person. I love adapting houses to my needs and tastes, and over the years I’ve become extremely creative in what I can do.  Right now, since house prices are so stagnant, I’m frustrated that I can’t make the major improvements I want. I often take these frustrations out on my poor characters, but the obstinate ones I’m creating for DEVILISH MONTAGUE  refuse to do their own decorating. They’re into shabby chic, apparently. (I think this next series may be exhibiting symptoms of my frustration—both books so far have the characters stuck with derelict houses!)

Anyway, this weekend I grew sick and tired of snow and taxes, and even the lovely reading list I’ve developed wasn’t keeping me entertained. So I decided—roll of drums, please—to finally get rid of the annoying shiny brass on the light fixture in my office. (I forgot to get a "before" pic but here's one I just ran across and here's what this person did with hers: scroll way down http://tinyurl.com/ye7rpql)

I know there are people who love shiny brass. But I hate shiny anything. I hated it in the 70’s when the only lamps I could buy when I had my first nest to feather were all brass.  At the time, I hunted and found antique brass, which I can tolerate. But this isn’t the 70’s any longer, even though my house dates to that period, and it’s time for a change.

I’ve been slowly replacing faucets and shower doors and whatnot with nickel. We’ve added new light fixtures in several places with glass instead of metal of any sort.  But the bedroom ceilings all have the same light fixture with a big bold glaring brass rim.

So I bought nickel metallic spray paint. I know. I told you, I’m dangerous. One does not spray paint indoors with the window closed. One definitely does not spray it at the ceiling. But I had some odd notion that I could simply remove the rim, take it to the garage, and have at it. Nope. That sucker is wired into the ceiling, rim and all. Annoying monster. Have paint can, will paint. (But have dh's camera doesn't equate with good photos. I can't find the zoom.)

So I carefully taped newspaper all over the ceiling around the—round—fixture. I don’t advise that either. Impossible to tape square sheets of paper to make them round. But even my sensible husband can’t stop a steamroller once I get rolling. He simply removed the bulbs and taped off the outlets and turned off the electricity so I didn’t kill myself in obvious ways. Given that I had to stand on my desk to reach the fixture, there were lots of less obvious ways to do it—like tripping over paperweights and speakers.

So I spray painted the brass. That metallic paint is pretty cool stuff. But when it dried and I tried to put the glass bowl back on, I realized I hadn’t painted the stupid brass knob that holds it on. And some of the rim near the ceiling didn’t get painted, so there was a lovely brass stripe around the outside. I kind of liked the brass ridge, so I scraped the whole edge and now I have a brass and nickel fixture. And I’m still alive to tell of it, but only because my husband and the gods who look after idiots took care of me.

Anyone else have exciting creative endeavors? Or know how to turn antique brass door handles to nickel?