My 3 Monsters: {31 Days to a Brand New Room}Day 9: A New Light Fixture

10.09.2012

{31 Days to a Brand New Room}
Day 9: A New Light Fixture

If you're joining us for the first time today, this is day 9 of a 31 day series about how to give a room in your home a brand new look, from top to bottom, completely DIY.

You'll find links to all the other posts in the series here, if you're interested.

Today is going to be a quick post -- nice to have an easy day after so many labor-intensive projects, right? We decided that the old chandelier in this room was a just a little too "precious" to go with the new decor. I really wanted to get this cool IKEA Maskros pendant light that looks like a great big dandelion, but at $89 it {once again} wasn't in my budget for this project.

That's OK. What I liked about it was the color, the round shape, and the modern feel of it. I knew I could find that in another fixture that was more affordable. When I was out at Panda Express for lunch one day I saw their paper lanterns and had a revelation. Round -- check. Modern feel -- check. Available in white -- check! You can buy paper lanterns lots of places these days. I've seen them at World Market, Target, Pier One, and Home Goods lately. The paper lanterns themselves are also available on Amazon.com for around $2. That's where I got mine. I got the light socket/cord kit at IKEA for $5. Cheap and easy -- my favorite words.

The cord kit from IKEA had a plug on the end, but I wanted to hardwire it into the wiring in the middle of the ceiling in place of the old chandelier and then swag it over to the corner. That's pretty easy to do, but for safety's sake I'm not going to try to explain it here. You should consult someone knowledgeable about electrical wiring or Google "how to hardwire a plug-in lamp" if you really want to do it yourself. I did my own and it only took about 10 minutes.

Here's what the old fixture looked like:

And here's the new one in there:

I love it in this space. It's clean and simple and fresh looking. I knew I was going to surround it with big tissue paper flowers and I didn't want it to be too busy. Come back tomorrow and I'll talk more about those tissue paper flowers.

Thanks for stopping by today!

2 comments:

Unknown09 October, 2012
Hardwiring in the plug in lamp? Holy Cow You Are Brave! Again - adorable :)
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Bonnie09 October, 2012
lol! I *covet* that IKEA flower lamp. I actually picked up the small version of it for my girl's room in our last apartment, but alas, did not realize it was a hardwire fixture rather than plug in and therefore completely unusable (and now that we're in an apartment where I CAN use it, my girl wrinkled her nose and told me in no uncertain terms, "no". Sigh.). :( It was a sad day when I had to return it... but I came home with 2 of the white paper lanterns and socket kits instead. ;p The plain white lantern worked nicely for my girl and I still have plans to make the second one into a "Death Star" lamp for my boys' room... you know, in my copious spare time.

I'm SO inspired by this series! Maybe I'll get around to making that Death Star after all. :)
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