a painted chandelier

The DIY network strikes again!  Ever since we finished the floors (Okay I’m lying- ever since I first SAW it), the old, yellow lighting fixture just off the entryway hasn’t looked quite right and I’ve been dying to replace it.  Come on, seriously, tell me I'm lying.

I scrolled through the offerings from Lowes, Home Depot, and a couple local lighting stores with out much luck- everything I kinda sorta liked was a minimum of 200 bucks.  And I still didn’t see anything that just, you know, spoke to me.

I was poking around the Habitat for Humanity ReStore place down on

Colonial Drive

looking for a large oval mirror on a stand that I could fix up when I saw IT- a shoddy, unassuming, downright fugly little glass and brass chandelier sitting on a bottom shelf.  No price tag, wires hanging out; I wasn’t even sure it worked.  I paid $9 for it and took “Chandy” home with me, where it sat in the garage for 2 weeks.

The interwebs are an amazing resource for DIY projects.  So here you go- my tutorial on painting your own brass chandelier:

TAKE MORE THAN ONE “BEFORE” PICTURE!!!  Not just so you can brag to your friends over your amazing finished project, but so you can remember how to put the damn thing back together!

(I would know.)

(Shut up.)

Okay, so I got this thing into pieces and Scot and his brilliance hung it up with string in the shed so I could get it painted.  I taped up over all the exposed wires and put Scotch tape over the tops where you’d screw the light bulbs in.  I’d taken the white plastic “candle” part off (they just slid off real easy) so I just put blue tape around the wires underneath.  I used Rustoleum primer, shown below.  Check the nozzle before you buy it so you don’t buy an effed up can and have to take it back for a new one.  Again, trust me.

Chandy’s little screw-on, decorative parts were too small to hang so I stuffed them with newspaper, balanced them on wooden skewers, and stuck them in the yard.  Lay out more newspaper so you don’t unintentionally spray paint your grass white.  Ooops.

Do probably 2 or 3 coats, waiting 20-30 minutes in between.  Let the primer dry for like, 2 days.  Seriously.  Especially if you’re in a high-humidity area, like Florida.  I got busy with work and poor Chandy hung out in the shed for almost a week before I got back to her.  The paint I used for the final coat was Rustoleum Hammered Finish in Dark Brown.  I didn’t take a picture of it because that paint it a pain in the ass.  I went to spray the chandelier and as soon as I squeezed the trigger, paint shot out sideways and coated my left arm and then started dripping out of the can and coated my right hand.  After a few choice vocabulary words, I kept spraying.  The paint kept shooting out and running down my right arm now.  I had to keep spraying though because as it dried it sort of glued my whole hand to the can of paint.  When I could no longer move my fingers and Chandy was pretty well covered, I peeled off a layer of skin with that stupid can and used up half a bottle of nail polish remover trying to remove the spray paint from my body.  An hour later, I went back out to try to get a second coat on her, wrapping my hand in a Wal-Mart sack as protective gear.  It doesn’t work all that well, I’d suggest elbow-length dish gloves from the get-go if you want to try this nonsense.

After 2 coats of spray paint dried (on my skin!), I went back out to the shed just before sunset and sprayed a clear gloss enamel on the chandelier.  And then I painted my fingernails pink to cover up the brown spray paint.

The chain holding up the chandelier was downright gross and I surely didn’t want to try to paint the wires and the individual rings so I sewed a sleeve for it.  I just got a half yard of dollar fabric (way too much!), cut out a long rectangle and sewed up the sides inside out.  I flipped it back to slide down over the chain and scrunch into place.

Chandy hung in the shed for another week til I could get back to her.  I swung by Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon burning a hole in my pocket the next Saturday.  I couldn’t decide what else to add to my project- little crystals or rope trim?  Shades?  It looked like it needed something, I just couldn’t figure out what.  Lo and behold, I found the last 5 PERFECT mini lamp shades at the “Lobby” and the truly magical part was that they were 50% off!  Deep red shades with some fun trim would be the perfect accent to a lighting fixture that I wasn’t even sure even worked!

After putting it together and taking it apart 3 times before I figured out where all the pieces went (remember, pictures!), I put in new bulbs, popped the shades on, put on my wire cover, Scot fastened Chandy up into the ceiling.  One drumroll, a flick of the light switch and TA DA!!!!!  I felt like Clark Griswold at Christmas!  Beautiful, magical light!  What a glorious display!  There may have been a happy dance involved.  Anyway, I love it and I’m excited to share it with you!

Total cost for this NEW chandelier:

Chandy- $9

Primer- $3.50

Hammered Finish paint- $7

Clear enamel gloss- $2

Fabric- $0.50
5 mini lamp shades-$15

TOTAL- $37 for the WIN!!!