Hanging a Chandelier! (How stupid can life get?)

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If you've been reading for awhile, you might remember I've mentioned that one of the fun things about being a butler for a billionaire family is that you learn something new every day.

Well, today I learned something new I should have already known!  (Which annoys me no end!  Ha!)

To explain:  My employers have lent the house out to a fund raising event (which they often do), and all the arrangements are being handled by the charity.  This includes the main floral centerpieces.  (But we always contribute the house flowers, in all the casual vases throughout the house.)

So today their chosen florist (someone new to me) called up and asked
the distance between our dining room table and the chandelier.  (I was in heavy traffic, approaching a school zone, and my favorite "Fat Bottomed Girls" was blasting.  So I was already annoyed by the call!)

But then, the icy tone of her voice and her business-like insistence triggered an instant dislike.  Ha!

"I don't know, two-and-a-half feet, maybe three," I replied,  just as cold and flat as her own voice.

Then, there was this long, long pause -- I thought the call had dropped!  But finally she said, as stern as can be, "Most chandeliers are thirty inches above the table.  I need to know the exact space."

Well -- aside from the fact I don't respond well to "stern" -- the distance is just something I kinda know by observation.  (And I don't recall it being covered in Butler School, unless that was a severe hangover day!) 

But when I took an actual measurement, it seems our chandelier is twenty-nine inches above the table, which I'll admit does concern a florist and how tall the centerpieces should be. 


There seems to be a raging debate among interior designers about how high a chandelier should be.  "Thirty to thirty-four inches above the table for an eight-foot ceiling," they say. 

Some of them go on to suggest, "If the ceilings are higher, raise the chandelier an additional inch or two for each foot."

What?

This is utter nonsense! 

They're forgetting the original idea of a chandelier (before electricity and dimmer switches) when candles were in use!   With the sole purpose being to see what the heck you're eating!  Ha!  

The lower the chandelier, the fewer candles that needed to be lit -- not to mention the ease of changing the candles every day.

And this practical and functional height has become traditional through the ages, even in modern times when candles were exchanged for light bulbs.

For Entry Halls and Grand Ball Rooms, the lighting fixtures are hung much higher, of course.   But to any interior designer who might be reading tonight, listen up: 

The ceilings in this house are eighteen feet high!  And nonetheless our Baccarat chandelier is dropped all the way down to 29 inches above the table!   Beautiful, charming -- and intimate!  Get it?


For those of us who live in apartments (including my own apartment here on the estate) this is one idiotic decision we don't have to deal with, right?

And getting back to reality, maybe we can listen to Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls"  tonight -- before we were so rudely interrupted by that phone call.    Ha!  

Here's the fun YouTube link!

Hope you're having a nice weekend!

Andrew