Quick Fix: Chandelier Makeover

We've had a winter full of surprises. Many of them were not good. Like the furnace breaking twice in the coldest February on record, leaving us with no heat for a month. Or the the day the second floor toilet flushing into the stud space one morning, and a short in a wire causing half the house to lose power in the afternoon. Or the day shortly after that when we woke up smelling gas in the kitchen (easy fix) and ended up with our water heater tagged because it needed a new chimney.
I have spent most of the winter hating my new house, and spending the reno budget on emergency repairs.
But I am trying to like it. I really am. So I am tackling the dining room on a shoe string budget-starting with that fabulous 1980's chandelier.

Behold the glory of brown glass. And the polished brass. The room was painted beige, and the brown glass on the chandelier served to make a brown room browner, and smaller. The whole effect left me feeling like the room was dingy all the time.

Unfortunately, it still works.
So it's makeover time. I love the look of this style, and figured I could pull it off, but could not find a source for the shells.

Then I found lots and lots of wire chandeliers and figured I was on to something.

The Hubster has been tearing down the over grown garden in the back yard. It was full of crumbling walls, aged and rotting wood, rebar sticking up at odd angles, and lots and lots of rusted wire fencing.
I took down the light, gave it a quick coat of silver spray paint that I had in the basement, and cut new shades out of the rusty wire. Cutting the wire to size was the hardest part of the project. It wasn't difficult, just tedious, and my hand kept cramping up. I worked on it over the course of two days.

I hooked the new shades onto the old hooks and over lapped the wire by three squares, twisting the ends to the grid where they over lapped.

Since there were two layers of glass, I made two shades. I love the new look-it is big enough to have a presence in the room, but light and airy enough to not make the room feel small.
I'd like to look for Edison bulbs to replace the candle stick bulbs, but I have not found the right ones just yet.
All together, I spent $0 on the project. Go me.
-Jen

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