An Almost New Dining Room Lamp

It was one of the first things we bought when we moved to DC eighteen years ago. We needed a table lamp so we drove somewhere in Virginia and my husband liked this long stemmed metal art deco lamp. It has been in storage since we moved to northern Virginia five years ago - until this week. A few years ago we got a Holtkotter desk lamp for the entryway. It’s quite heavy and is a real pain in the neck. It found its way to the dining room side board when we moved. It has a halogen bulb - which I burned my fingers on once - and it stopped working. We took it to the neighborhood light store The company is now out of business and you can’t find replacement bulbs. The light bulb was working so it had to be the lamp. When we brought it home we plugged it back in and it worked - and then it didn’t after a few days. We couldn’t even unscrew the glass shade to get at the bulb. So rather than try and find a lightbulb or fool around with this annoying lamp anymore I took out the good old standby to see if it might work. I never cared for the height of the lamp on a side table. It was just too tall. But on the sideboard it balanced out the vase and the metal pieces and blended in nicely with the large mirror behind it. So now we are trying to find a way to get rid of the heavy glass lamp shape without having to drive to the dump. At least we had a decent replacement lamp. 

Holtkotter Broken Lamp

It was a really lovely lamp. We found it six years ago at Alexandria Lighting. It looked like a floating cloud and had an interesting dimmer and turn off function. It was sleek and sat on the entryway table in our Capitol Hill condo. When we moved to northern Virginia three years ago, the Holtkotter lamp really didn’t have a place in the new space. So it ended up in the dining room. One of the first things I did was burn my fingers on the tiny halogen light bulb that needed to be changed the first day we moved in. From then on I never cared for that lamp. So this week the bulb went out. I found our halogen bulb replacement. When we removed the cloud glass part of the lamp - with some difficulty - the next part was to take out the lightbulb. It wasn’t easy - and another reminder of how impractical this light actually is. We finally twisted the bulb out after carefully re reading the instructions. We got the replacement bulb in quick enough, but we couldn’t lower the glass cloud over the stem. There was a small metal piece sticking out. So I got our smallest Allen wrench out and tried to screw it in so the surface was flat. Too much twisting did the trick until the ceramic piece holding the bulb shattered. So now the lamp is useless unless we can find a place to repair it. I’ve contacted two places - including the place we bought it - and no one has yet responded. In the end we decided we really don’t need a lamp in the dining room, so we won’t buy another one. I don’t think this lamp is made anymore - probably because it is so impractical. But if we can get this one repaired we will. My husband really liked this lamp. And for that reason alone it’s worth getting it fixed. 

 

Halogen Track Lights

We have lived in DC for ten years, and for the first time, one of the track lights in the kitchen burned out. All I know is that whenever one of these has bitten the dust, no one can figure out how to remove the halogen light from the holder. My husband was able to figure out how to finally get it out, and it was a good excuse to walk down to Frager's hardware store and stock up on a few new bulbs. The slogan there is "if we don't have it, you don't need it," and with a little help from the staff, we were able to locate and find what we needed. So we got four replacement bulbs and decided to update all of them. It so happens that we had wall damage being repaired at the same time this happened, and our expert handy man, man of all trades, was kind enough to replace all of them for us, along with a couple other things that needed attention - like the squeaky bathroom faucet. Now let's hope the new halogen lamps all last another ten years.