Let There Be Light

We moved into our current house 3 years ago, I said the foyer light would be the first to go.  It was NOT my style.   Since we moved in, I have searched stores, Craigslist, and catalogs waiting for a light to speak to that wasn't a fortune and both my husband and I agreed on.  We found one we liked online, but by the time we went to order it, it was out of stock.   So the ugly one ended up staying with us for a long time.  We kind of got used to the ugly thing.

Until I saw a pin on Pinterest for this blog on how to turn an antique bird cage into a chandelier like the one at Restoration Hardware.  Here.  I was sold, now instead of light fixture searching, it was vintage bird cage searching.  I found one locally at Country Antiques in Rochester,  here.  If you are local check her out.  Its a small shop run for a hobby, she's only open certain days or by appointment.  But great prices,  great stuff, and a lovely little stop.

When my helper (ie husband) got home he wasn't to excited, he knew he had just got roped into a project bigger than I thought it was going to be.  And he wasn't sold he would like it.

Down came ugly light.  We hoped the chandelier inside the light would slide right into the birdcage, no luck.

Luckily for us, hubby and I both had to take electrical classes in college and decided to tackle taking apart the light, and rewire it so it would fit, how difficult could it be??



Well  a full day of work for hubby, two trips to Home Depot, and a all afternoon search for a threaded coupling with a wire hole in it (4 custom light shops later we found something that worked).  We had a wired chandelier.



Off to the paint booth....we sprayed it antique copper.  I wanted ORB but the chain hanging is brass and we really didn't want to take that down.  Our 20ft ladder wasn't tall enough to reach that high.

After it was painted, its assembly time...Another almost day of labor of tweeks.



Engineering how the light would safely attach to the birdcage and house the wire connections was the hardest part for us.  Our birdcage didn't have a nice top that could be cut out to make a clean attachment to the chandelier.  3 fixture ceiling covers, screws, and lots of cursing later hubby had it!

Three days of labor later we have light!  Now that it is hung there are a few small tweeks that need to be done to the housing, and we need to get a few more bulbs.  A few didnt make it thru our journey, but that will wait a few days...or maybe weeks or months...and we found a definite appreciation for why chandeliers cost what they do!  But we love it!

And love the fun things it does to the high walls and ceilings at night!

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