BEFORE & AFTER
I finally decided to take on the project of redoing my closet (paint, shelves, etc) and one of the items on my wish list was a fancy, girly mini chandelier. I'll put up a separate post about the closet project, but this one is dedicated to just the chandelier!!
I first started looking at chandeliers "off the shelf" and unfortunately, the ones I liked were all $100 or more and when I was trying to do my whole closet on a budget, I just could not justify spending that much on a little chandelier. Therefore, my mind immediately went to Plan B... "how can I make this inexpensively?"
In my head, I imagined a little white chandelier with crystals on it, so I started off with two things in mind: 1) buying the crystals; and 2) finding a cheap chandelier that had the right size and shape that I could makeover.
CRYSTALS
I was lucky that I just happen to be in Michaels the Saturday after Thanksgiving (looking for some completely unrelated frames) and I noticed all of the jewelry supplies and beads were on a super sale. So I scooped up the size/shape of crystals I wanted, just guessing on the amount I would need (I didn't actually have the chandelier yet) and go them at something like 75% off. In total, they were maybe $10.
CHANDELIER
Then I started my Craigslist search. When I talk about my love of Craiglist and all of the great things I find there, I hear the same thing over and over... "you have such good luck because I NEVER find anything good on Craigslist!" So here's my trick to Craigslist shopping... it's not really luck, but persistence and patience. You can't be spontaneous with Craigslist. You have to know what you're looking for, be willing to wait and then constantly check back. I have a Craigslist app on my phone and when I'm "on the hunt" for something, I check it pretty regularly, maybe every couple of days. And I'll go through spurts where I check every day and then get distracted for a week or two. But I just stay patient and keep checking, searching with a few key works and within the price range I'm willing to pay. In this case the key words were "chandelier" and "ceiling light" and I wasn't willing to pay anymore than $20 because I knew I had already spent $10 in crystals and I would need another $5-10 in supplies like paint and anything misc. So my total planned budget was about $30. The biggest challenge with this Craiglist hunt was size. I found lots of lights on the first day that would have been perfect, but they were all too big. My closet is about 6' by 7' with shelves all the way to the top (or it was going to be, after the redo) so I needed something really small that wouldn't block the shelving. When I first saw this light, listed for $15, I was fortunately able to see past that awful glass dome and tell that there was a mini chandelier hiding in there. However, there was also a down light and I could tell it would take a lot of tinkering to make it work, so I passed. After a few more weeks, I could tell that finding something the right size would be tough, so I decided to go for it and ended up negotiating the price down to $10.
This was my light in its original golden 90's glory. To say that both my husband and mom were skeptical is putting it mildly.
Once I brought it home, my first goal was to get that awful glass dome off, so I just started screwing apart the pieces of the light. I am not electrician, but if you have ever put together a light or messed with one at all, you will know that they are pretty simple. They are just pieces that screw onto one another, so it's really easy to take them apart. I took off that sort of metal orb at the top and then the dome came right off the top.
Taking out the dome light was a little more complicated, but still a pretty manageable project. I am definitely no electrician, but I could tell once I opened up the light that I could just disconnect the two wires of the down light (and then connecting the "leftover" wires together) and easily just screw the down light off the bottom. The wiring for a light it just a simple loop so as long as everything is connected in a line, your light will still work. Imagine Christmas lights - you just connect the wires end to end and as long as they are each connected together by the "plugs" (or the little wire nuts on a light) then the whole thing will have power and work.
After taking off the glass dome and the down light, I played around a little with the components, again, all of which just screw together in any order, until I had a shape that looked nice and allowed for the hanging of crystals.
From here, I spray painted the light white (I hung it from the rafters in my garage to make it easier to paint) drilled little holes to attach the strands of crystals, attached the strands of crystals (which I strung on wire so that they would fit the light) and voila, I had my new crystal chandelier. I think if I account for every penny I put into this light, it cost no more than about $26, which is as follows:
- Light = $10
- Crystals = $10
- White Spray Paint = $3.50
- Small metal ring to hang light = $2.00
