White Beauty

Check out the new addition to my kitchen!

 

 Many months ago I was  making a weekly run through Goodwill to see if there was anything I couldn't live without and I stumbled across this beauty. A gold two-tiered chandy (pic on the upper left above - but imagine it with two tiers). If you check out my house tour, you will see I already have 4 chandeliers in my house and really didn't have room for one more. Especially not a big one like this.
 

So I called my sister and asked if it would be crazy to buy this chandelier now, because it was an incredible deal (only $10!), and save it for 4 years until we buy our next house. She confirmed that it was crazy but I bought it anyway, determined to find a place for it. After we put in our new bar it was apparent we needed more light on that side of the room... and I had the perfect solution! The too big chandelier. I ultimately settled on painting it white instead of a fun bright color (like this one) because I thought it would be less imposing. I think it worked too. It is gorgeous, but is sort of camo'd with the ceiling. I rigged it up in the garage from a bike hook to paint.

 

Here is a peak of the gold it used to be. You can see here I stuffed all the bulb holes with paper towel to protect them from the spray paint.

 
Before I could start using this beauty some big changes had to happen. I didn't want to take down the fan that was already in the kitchen so I decided I wanted to convert this chandelier into one with a plug. Unfortunately, I am not quite DIY savvy enough to do this myself so I called in reinforcements... my dad. He went and bought a kit from Menards that was made for chandelier converting - it came with a nice white chain, the right wires and wing nuts, a cord with a plug on the end and more... all for $10. Bonus: it is called a "Swag" kit. :-)

Here you can see him taking it all apart to get to the middle - where the wires start and the new cord needed to be hooked up. Just remember the order you took things off - we had to put it back together again a few times to get it right.

Picture of the kit - definitely the least expensive way to go.

 To hang the chandelier I carefully climbed on top of my dining room table and started a hole. We bought a heavy duty hook to make sure it wouldn't pull out of the ceiling and make a giant hole/ruin my chandelier. Also in the picture below you can see that we played with hanging it over the bar (there was an existing hook there) but ultimately I decided it was too crowded and wanted it over the dining room table.

I had to do another coat of spray paint after my dad converted it to the plug - the process caused a couple scratches, but nothing that I couldn't fix with a little spray paint. Then it was time to hang and screw in all 12, yes TWELVE, bulbs. I bought 25 watt bulbs and it is still super bright! I also added a few crystals my sister gave me off a chandelier she rescued from a rummage sale a few years back.

Total cost for this project = $23
$10 - Chandelier
$10 - Light Swag Kit
$3 - Spray Paint

What do you think? Are 5 chandeliers in one house too many? What if they are all gorgeous?