Let there be light

We continue to tick off the final few finishing flourishes in the (almost) never-ending saga of hall and staircase refurbishment. Today's instalment: a new light fitting in the hall.

I say new, but this particular fitting has been with us since our previous home, where it hung in the dining room. It was reasonably expensive, but more importantly I really liked it, so it came with us when we moved and in the four-and-a-half years since it has lived in various boxes, cupboards, and most recently spent almost a year under my desk in the study. All this procrastination had two main causes. We couldn't decide where we wanted it (and even if we tried, it was odds-on that particular room wasn't "done" yet, so it would have had to wait anyway); and since the ceilings in New Barns were considerably lower than these, it being a new build, the light fitting had been shortened. Made too short, in fact, for the Edwardian ceilings we now have.

In an unusual spurt of enthusiasm several years ago, I had ventured out to B&Q (Home Depot for my transatlantic readers) and secured a length of decorative chain and a roll of electric cable of the right hue with which to recable the thing, but at that point the procrastinatory shutters came down again. The chain and the cable have followed the light fitting around the house from box to cupboard to under-my-desk, unused, ever since.

Finally, with the hall newly skimmed and painted, we decided that was the best place for the light. I began taking it apart to find out how hard a job the recabling would be. The answer? Hard. It wasn't so much the disassembly/reassembly, or the convoluted path of the cable, but once I arrived at the business end of the fitting - a small space in the innermost cylinder in which the cables from all five lamps, and the incoming power cable, all came together with thermal sleeving and industrially-crimped clips - I realised I wasn't going to be able to get the darned thing apart electrically, let alone put it back together again.

A professional was called for.

And, in the way of professionals, he took a Gordian Knot approach to the problem. "Why don't I just splice on an extra length of cable, and hide the join inside the top cup?" Why indeed.