Archives for January 2012

Back in December, I was in Colorado visiting family and found the most amazing shop called Urban Home +Design by Old Glory Antiques in Centennial. My Mom frequents this shop and I couldn't wait to spend some quality time there.  While we were there we found these fabulous old metal baskets that I immediately thought would make some stunning cage pendant lights for my kitchen.  The other day I showed a sneak peak of the final project and promised I would have the tutorial up later this week. Today, I have the tutorial on how to make your very own DIY cage pendant light…

Now when you begin this process you can go several different routes when it comes to creating your own light fixture.  You can by lamp kits at your local hardware store for one. Buy all of the components and build your own.  I found in my research that I was having a hard time finding the components for the type of pendant light that I was looking for.  In my search I made my way to West Elm and found that they have a pendant cord that was the exact look I was going for and decided to go that route.  Is it the cheapest route? No, but for my vision for the project it was the best choice.

Here is what you will need…

• a metal basket
• pendant light cord set
• pendant light conversion kit
• 3/8"  non-metal clamp connector
• step drill
• vintage light bulb {optional}
• round metal file

To begin you need to drill a hole into the bottom of your basket.  For this project my SWEET brother-in-law came over and helped.  He is BRILLIANT when it comes to anything around the home.  He used the step drill to drill the hole in the metal at the bottom of the basket…

The step drill in a fabulous tool to help you slowly and carefully create the proper size whole that you will need.  We also drilled it in a box to minimize metal shavings flying all over the garage.

It was amazing how slick the step drill was.  As you can see the edges were pretty rough so he filed down the edges with a round metal file…

Place the clamp connector into the hole and secure…

Cut the plug off the pendant light and feed the cable through the clamp.  Secure the clamp and voila… you have yourself your very own cage pendant light.

Now I don't plan on posting about how to hardwire this to your electrical system, because quite frankly I am not an electrician.  I would recommend that you have someone who knows what they are doing hard wire your lights into your system.  I will post some suggestions on how to place your light or lights soon.  I made a set of three lights in order to create a fun pendant cluster to put over my kitchen table.

Aren't they fun?  Thank you so much to my brother-in-law for all the help.  You're amazing!!