How to Make a Solar Chandelier
I found the perfect beautiful vintage chandelier on Facebook Marketplace today!
The glass crystals were beautiful, the color was perfect, the only problem was that I have not one place in my whole house to hang it.
I tried a few different options including my daughter's room but that was a hard pass for her.
See what I ended up doing with it...
So the chandelier looked beautiful on Facebook Marketplace but when I went to pick it up the woman had taken the whole thing apart and wrapped each crystal separately.
The first things to go were the shades.
As you're reading please visit the bold blue links for the products I used and related Homeroad projects. Also the READ MORE section will take you to a variety of related DIY projects!
Wrapping it so carefully was very nice but it was a b#?$% to put back together! I looked at the original posting photo to try and figure it out but it took a while.
Needless to say that the first thing I did was to clean the chandelier and all the crystals with a little Dawn dish soap and water.
I thought about painting it but it was really the perfect off white color with gold streaks. And yes I have a cat! Nice background pics LOL
I hung the chandelier up in my basement to work on it and when I plugged it in I realized that the bulbs were LED. Not a good look for a vintage chandelier no matter what I was going to do with it.
I replaced the bulbs with chandelier bulbs that had a pretty low light.
And then I tried to figure out where I was going to hang it in my house. I went from room to room until I got to my 25 year old daughter's room and before I could open my mouth she said "Absolutely not"!
Ok, I can take a hint. I moved on... I decided that the only thing to do with it was to either hang it back downstairs to give my unfinished basement a little class or to give it a makeover.
I decided on the makeover!
The first thing I did was to cut the wire and remove most of the chain at the top. I left about 10 loops of chain.
Next, I took off the candle looking pieces. I cut off and removed the wiring and the brackets.
I used hot glue to re-attach the candles pieces back into the flowers on the chandelier.
Next, a quick trip to the dollar store to get 4 solar lights. When I got back, I removed the black stick that goes into the ground and hot glued the solar light right into the candle thingy.
And that was it! Just need to add 3 more lights and hung it by the chain in the gazebo. The solar lights actually look like the copper ones, which Dollar Tree does sell, but these are the silver and the gazebo tent makes them look copper.
You may be wondering if the solar lights get enough light under the gazebo and the answer is yes!
I couldn't wait until it was very dark to see how beautiful the chandelier looked!
By the way if you've ever wanted a gazebo on your deck and didn't know how to anchor it without causing damage to the deck... I've got you! This is how we did it several years ago and it hasn't moved an inch!!
Please pin for later --->>
Here is the other side of the deck, as you can see we are a big fan of solar lights of all kinds.
In this photo you can see several of my latest DIY projects:
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