I have to confess, I’ve totally been holding out on you in the project department.
Okay, really I’ve just been holding out on you in general, but the semester is almost over (which strikes some chords of terror in my heart) and then I’ll be back to blabbing more than you could ever want to hear. I’ve been marinating on several things this semester and I’m still trying to figure out how to articulate them.
Don’t worry, I’ll get it figured out:).
I’ve done several small and large mental health projects in the last few months (spray paint makes me feel better about life). I’ll take a photo home tour (promise, mom) and show them all to you.
In the meantime, I finished this guy yesterday:
We have builder grade overhead lights/fans but they don’t throw off the most appealing light in our living/dining/kitchen room. With only two lamps for the whole room, it was either pretty dark at night or we had to turn on one of the overhead lights.
Obviously, that’s not the end of the world but we had a leftover light kit from a paper lantern that bit the dust several moves ago (fragile paper+Uhaul=torn). I hung on to the light kit because I knew we could do something with it at some point.
I really wanted to put light into this corner (the fridge is to left of this alcove and the hallway to bedrooms and bathroom is on the right), but there isn’t an electrical outlet. Jared did a little hunting and found one behind the fridge. With a clearance extension cord from Lowe’s we were in business.
This wire pendant lamp “thing” was my third attempt to create some sort of pendant lamp. My other two attempts failed. They failed hard.
First, I attempted this lovely
doily pendant lamp. I used an exercise balloon and after about 32 hours, before the wallpaper glue dried, the balloon deflated and my doilies started crumpling into a pathetic lump. Bummer, dude.
I then tried this
similar, but different twine version. Again, my balloon began deflating before the glue had set and I was left with another half-dried lumpagus. It’s quite comical to me now.
If you love either of those ideas, I still think they’d be doable. But, buy the rubber ball instead of using a balloon (even the exercise balloons). I would have, but for the life of me I couldn’t find one here. This. town. is. weird. (Hey, people that grew up here agree, it’s not just me)
When I saw
this tutorial, I figured this was something I couldn’t ruin by deflation. I already had the wire I needed, so I grabbed a can of spray paint (I think spray paint could possibly be the catalyst towards world peace. No, I kid. Or, do I?) and I was set.
It’s not perfectly spherical, but I really like it that way.
I spray painted the part of the light kit that would stick out (but blocked off the bulb outlet, silly), then I roughly followed this tutorial for a jute cord cover (I did not do the smaller cord underneath, I used a medium width jute and it worked pretty well). We already had a drywall hook (that I installed all by myself, thanks very much) and 3M tabs to keep everything in place.
Let there be light!
Actually… there’s a little too much light. I bought the world’s brightest lightbulb (it threw a shadow in daylight) so we need to get one that’s a little calmer, especially since it doesn’t really have a “shade”.
Other than that, two thumbs up from us!
the rugged range 