A New Chandlier!

As our regular readers might recall, we lost a beautiful chandelier in the Willow Bough Foyer this past February. And by lost, we mean it fell off the ceiling, broke into a lot of small pieces, and left a dent in the tile floor. Click here for the original posting. After some consultation, we determined that it was not feasible to repair the broken chandelier.

But we are pleased to announce that we have finally replaced it. The new chandelier is a Victorian period hexagonal hanging lamp found by House Manager Joe and our friends the Brady's at an antiques auction. The photo below is of the lamp in the condition we bought it in.


Unfortunately, one of the lamp's panels had been replaced and didn't match the rest. Instead of trying to replace the odd panel, we opted to swap out all of them. We brought the lamp to Morristown House of Glass who replaced the panels with clear and textured panes. As you can see below, the refurbished lamp looks great!


As a side note, if you, or someone you know, has an interest in broken chandelier parts or dangly crystal things give us a call. The previous chandelier is currently sitting in a box in the attic, and would love to be repurposed into something new.

Willow Hall Spring Cleaning Day!

Thanks to everyone who made our Spring Cleaning Day a success. The kitchen in the cottage smells a lot nicer, the front patio looks a lot cleaner, and the fallen pine in the back is almost all gone.

Jim works on cutting our fallen pine into manageable pieces.

Joe arrives with reinforcements.

Kristin sweeps off the front patio.

Marge and Kristin clean the kitchen area of the cottage, which we hope to find a tenant for soon.

Neil load limbs into Jim's trunk while daughter Cambria supervises.

A special thanks to Faith for being our official photographer for the day!

Thinking about water efficiency at Willow Hall

We’ll be the first to tell you that “going green” can take some time. It’s a process where we adjust our lifestyles (or office-style in our case) to be more considerate of the environment. It’s also something which might never be finished as our understanding of the environment continues to grow and new technology becomes affordable.

Take our water usage at Willow Hall for example. There are four bathrooms in Willow Hall. When we were almost ready to move in last summer, our plumber informed us that two of the four toilets were broken beyond repair. While this posed a bit of a problem for the staff, it provided an excellent opportunity to install more efficient equipment in the two bathrooms.

The apartment toilet is in proper working order (for now) so we’ve decided to hold off on replacing it. The downstairs toilet is another story (see the photo below). Besides that obvious aesthetic issue that the toilet, sink, and bathtub are black and never look clean, the toilet tank is huge and uses at least 5 gallons per flush. (The current standard for toilets is 1.6 gallons per flush and high efficiency toilets use 1.28 gallons or less.)


Needless to say, as an organization that works to protect water supplies, we’re not particularly proud of that toilet. But there are plans to replace it with a more efficient toilet when we get funding to make the whole bathroom ADA-compliant.

In the future we would also like to upgrade our faucets with more efficient models as well. Like we said, it’s a process.

Efficiency is an important component of reducing our water usage. There are some behaviors we can’t stop doing, such as washing our hands or flushing the toilet (unless you have a composting toilet). But we can minimize the impact of those behaviors by using efficient fixtures that let you do the same thing with less water. Though it’s important to note that even with efficient fixtures, 30 minute showers are still a waste of water.

Picture Hanging

During the past 40 years that our Executive Director has been leading the Passaic River Coalition, she has collected quite a few pictures, paintings, and cartoons that have a connection to our organization. One of them finally got hung up last week.

Ella says this is one of her favorite paintings. On a trip to England, she and her husband commissioned an artist to paint a Great Blue Heron. To many river advocates, the Great Blue Heron is a symbol of healthy waterways.

Decorating Willow Hall with our art collection has proved a bit more difficult than initially expected. (But really, hasn't everything here gone that way?) Almost every room in the house is lined with beautiful crown molding. We originally thought we could hang our pictures with fishing line from this molding, museum style. It turns out the crown moldings are made of plaster and that would have been a very bad idea.

Instead we'll be using nails to hang the picture up the old fashioned way. But even this will have be done very carefully so as not to damage the original plaster walls.

Brrrrrr . . . it's cold in here!

Seriously. The furnace is broken.

Fortunately, Gold Medal Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, & Electric has come to the rescue.

But now we really need help paying some of our bills as Environmental Specialist Allyson demonstrates in the photo below. Any donation you can make would be greatly appreciated!


Your donation is tax-deductible and will make you a member of the Passaic River Coalition - you'll receive our bi-annual newsletter and an invitation to an annual event. You can donate electronically using the blue donate button on this page or mail a donation to:
Passaic River Coalition
330 Speedwell Ave
Morristown, NJ 07960
(Please make checks out to the Passaic River Coalition)
Thanks for your help!

Find of the Week

This week's Willow Hall Find is brought to you by one of several dump sites in the back of our property. It's an old bracket from one of the house's window lintels which are made of iron. You can compare it to a bracket that is still on the house. While we're not 100% sure, it's possible these decorative pieces were made at Speedwell Ironworks.