Restoring Vintage Plastic from Yellow to Clear » Akiya Renovation » Ōmishima, Imabari, Ehime, Japan
We have a million little projects going on at once, while restoring our akiya home that was previously abandoned for 10 years. Today, we’re going to look at these cool vintage light fixtures! We can only assume they were original from the house construction in 1953. We use a simple process to turn the old, yellowed plastic back to beautiful clear. Two of the fixtures were so orange, they were nearly opaque, and I honestly wasn’t sure if they were originally clear or goldenrod. They were clear!!!
We used a slightly different technique than many of the YouTube videos I watched, because we couldn’t buy hydrogen peroxide in large quantities. So I mixed it with a little bit of baking soda (just to make a paste, so the peroxide would stick to the plastic), before wrapping in saran wrap, and setting in the sun. This was a super simple process, and I couldn’t be happier with the results!
Related Blog “Major Work Begins”:
https://bentonhomestead.com/archives/1722
Full Blog: “What We’re Looking For in Mexico or Japan”:
https://bentonhomestead.com/archives/564
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Japan has an estimated 8.5 million akiya (abandoned homes), and we’ve purchased one of them! The akiya we’re currently renovating was purchased for ¥1 Million ($7500 USD). We have our work cut out for us! The house is in a great location for attracting tourists as they ride their bicycles along the Shimanami Kaido, so we currently intend to renovate it into a guesthouse rental. We will renovate a second nearby akiya for our own homestead, and restore nearby farmland that’s been sitting unused for over a decade. We’ve just received our 6-month Startup Visa, which will then allow us to apply for a 1-year Business Manager Visa, and essentially sponsor our own residency in Japan.
I’m documenting literally everything, with photography and video. If you’re curious to see life behind-the-scenes, I’m sharing pretty much daily updates on our Benton Homestead “stories” on social media.
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Beach Party – Islandesque by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100613 | Artist: http://incompetech.com/
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