We’ve seen some that we’ve liked in stores, but not exactly what we were looking for. I found some online that I liked, but they were hundreds of dollars. To help achieve the rustic themed kitchen we are going for, we want lanterns.
I found this one online here and really liked it, but the cost barrier rises up and slaps me in the face. So, I decided to make some.
I was at Lowes a few days ago, and saw these on sale for about 15 bucks.
Perfect? No. But they’ll do. I disassembled one to see what I had to work with, here.
That metal rectangle is the back plate; the remaining 3 sides are glass. The arms on the lantern come off, also. This looked like it could work. First, I needed to rewire the socket so the wires came out the top of the lantern instead of the side.
Looking inside the socket, there are 2 screws holding on the metal flange on the back. I removed them, took off the flange, passed the wires through the 1/8th inch threaded thing that I don’t know the name of but there’s a picture of it below, and reassembled.
I then reassembled the light, leaving out the metal back-panel. Here’s how it looked at that point.
I then realized that the provided wiring wasn’t going to work, because my wiring was going to be visible and wrapped around a chain, so I took it back apart and rewired it with some lamp cord, which is readily available at any home improvement store. I also drilled a hole through the loop top piece with my hammer drill. Here’s how it looked after the rewire and putting the loop piece back on.
Be sure to keep track of which side of the lamp cord is hot. I did this by trimming the hot side so that when I went to wire it into the ceiling, hot would be a little shorter.
Next up was the ceiling plate. I was able to use the wall-mounting portion of the light itself that I removed earlier. This part is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a couple pictures.
After that, I wrapped the cord through a length of black chain and proudly showed my work to the wife. She didn’t like the chain. So, back to the store I went and wandered around aimlessly looking for inspiration for about an hour before settling on something. I bought a couple 3ft sections of 1/4in copper tubing, like what would be used for small plumbing jobs. I also bought some compression fittings that would allow me to go from the copper to the 1/8in threaded nipple doo-dad pictured earlier. The 1/4in copper needs a 3/8in compression fitting. I bought four 3/8in by 1/4in ones; one for each end of each tube. I also bought two 1/4in by 1/8in bushings that are needed to allow the socket inside the lamp to thread into the copper.
Since everything is hollow, I can now pass the lamp cord right through the middle of them. Here’s how attempt number 1 looked.
Getting closer. When I made the second one, I was able to reduce the visibility of some of the brass by hiding it inside the fixture. I went back and did the same to the first one. Here’s how the both of them look right now.
Pay no attention to the still-unfinished range hood back there.
I ended up buying another set of the lights because I wanted some spare parts and I needed some of the glass inserts to fill in the 4th side of these ones (remember that they were actually wall-mounted lights to start, so only 3 sides had glass). Even after buying a second set of lights, the whole project still came in under 50 bucks. Not too shabby for some decent-looking pendant lights.
So if you've got the parts, everything is disassembled, and you've rewired your socket, here's the assembly steps:
- Widen the holes in the top of the lantern and the wall (now ceiling) plate to accept a 3/8in nipple.
- Thread the bushing into the compression fitting, then put the threaded part of the fitting through the lantern top. Insert the copper into the compression fitting, and thread onto what should be sticking out the top of the lantern. Make this as tight as possible. A vice helps out here.
- Do the same thing to the mounting side, now, but minus the bushing (it's not needed here).
- You should now have your pendant sans light socket. Feed the wire into the opening in the bushing in the inside of the lantern until it pops out of the ceiling plate. Pull the rest through, and then thread the socket into the bushing.
- Reassemble the rest of the lantern, insert glass, etc, and you're good to go.
I’m planning on buying some kind of spray product to smoke the glass with, as they don’t offer much spot-lighting as they are now. I’ll post some shots after I do that.
So how about it? Any opinions on how they turned out?
