From Alan Belson:

Oh...the kiddies are going to have SO much fun standing on the balcony and using a stick to play with the pretty balls...

Bowling is the first thing that comes to mind

I'm curious about replacing bulbs.

just use a stick and hook to pull them to ya

The halogen G4 capsules just plug in for
changing out duff capsules. There will be a 4 foot wide staircase underneath the luminaire, not yet built. I will simply bridge over from the sublanding with a couple of planks. I have saved some nice 2 x 14 scots pine boards for the purpose. Then I'll just send my wife up and shout instructions from a safe distance!

Here in the states, OHSA requires that planks that you will be standing on (like scaffolding) be free of knots.
It's probably overkill, but if you need to stand on them in the future, I'd suggest that you set the planks on blocks out in the garden and make sure that they can support you safely.
That way if they break, you'll fall a foot to the grass instead of lots of feet to the nice hard stairs.

Oh, so that's what that fixture looks like. I think I'm going to install the same fixture later today. I thought the same thing about kids playing with it. I'll bet those balls would shatter with a nice loud crack!
I'll take my camera with me and get a picture.
For the record, there's a note on the carton that one of the "balls" is missing, I didn't break it.
FRANK

Frank, sorry to hear you have a ball missing. My balls are made of aluminum, and thus will not shatter, but flatter. There was an option to have glass balls, but those appeared to be full of glass fibres and looked a bit naff,
Allow plenty of time to untangle and straighten the 15 leads and arrange your balls to hang nicely. It took me bloody hours!

{Alan, just be careful how you word things here, we still have to keep a PG rating}.

That Plank.
Most of the timber in my remodel comes from trees that fell during la grande tempête of the 26/27th of December 1999, so the timber is now well dried. They were big specimen trees in a park belonging to a friend, planted in about 1835. I got a Cedar of Lebanon, the scots pine [ american scotch pine] and a sequoia [California Redwood? ] amongst others, a total of well over 500 cubic feet of boards. By a pure fluke, the sawmill was just 200 metres up the road from the park, but the crafty old miller had already bought all the downed oak and beech trees. That scots-pine plank can actually be seen in pic 1 under a 2x6 Douglas fir board, both being used for bridging the landing during plastering and painting. It’s ‘quarter sawn’, virtually knot free and spanning 11 ft 6”. The presence of knots, particularly dead knots, can seriously weaken a beam. However, these boards have already supported both Denise and I at center-span, a combined load of some 300 pounds. BTW, the stairwell casings and the floorboards are in Cedar of Lebanon, a lovely scented wood, which can be also be seen in pic 1. Notice the oak floor-joist through-tenons piercing the casings: just because I could! I deliberately had the boards cut wide, as it gives a wonderful effect seeing wide stuff in a time when, [in France at least], anything over 10” is as rare as hens’ teeth [ or made of veneered MDF]. The finish is just beeswax and real turpentine, 20/80 cut.

Alan

"Then I'll just send my wife up and shout instructions from a safe distance!"

I would not think of sending my wife up there, if she fell, who would test the mushroons I pick.

Lol LK.

Ian (there was another post there...) A.

From Alan: