A Thousand @$%$ Points of Light

In the last two weeks before the opening of Joyce's store, I received a new work order.  The Lady of the House declared that it would be Just Beautiful if we could have her mother's chandelier in the new store.  And, before you can say "Yes, Dear!" I was heading down into the basement vault, to retrieve it.  Although it had been 12 years, my remarkable archiving system was able to turn up the box within 30 seconds.  

That was the easy part.  The next step was to clean it.  It was brass with little chains of crystally marble sparkly things.  Hundreds of the little buggers, and all with a coating of dust.  This was not going to be a problem solved with a spritz of Windex, oh, no.

 So, I suspended it from one of the garment racks, and began to dismantle it.  A flood of jarring memories of the Night of the Lucite Lamp haunted my every destructive move.  The angels shouted "No! You'll never get that back together again"   But, doggedly, I persevered, and eventually achieved total disassembly.    There are so many little pieces... so many....

The "bones" looked like brass tarantulas crawling up the chains.  The brass parts cleaned up fairly easily with lots of Windex, and a few paper towels.

But, then there were those "Thousand Points of Light".  All off those little hangy thingies were very delicate, and couldn't just be wiped off.  I soaked them in a very strong hand-destroying solution of distilled vinegar and ammonia with warm water, and let the little things dry on a fluffy pink terry towel.

Once the little glass buggers were dry, I had to re-hook each one individually back on to the tarantula family. I was a bit late for supper, but.......

Voila!

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