Lantern Update

Yay! So excited!
My sweet dad and his friend Bob came up to our house yesterday to work on my lantern. As I mentioned in my last post, I bought a brass lantern from Habitat Restore for $20!

Here it is in all it's shiny brass glory.

I wanted to replace this brass chandelier that was in our hallway.

Unfortunately, after dad hung the new lantern, we ended up with 2 problems...

1. It didn't work! While dad was connecting it, we did have a spark issue at one point. (Scared both of us to death!) So we didn't know if there was an issue with the wiring in the lantern or the old wires in our house.

2. The other issue was that it would be hanging from a spot in our hallway that was definitely not centered. We're guessing someone added on the closet on the left side. When they added it, they had to move the chandelier over with a hook. The problem with the new chandelier is that there wasn't enough length in the wire to pull it over to the side.

So my amazing dad and his buddy Bob fixed it all! They fixed the house wiring and then replaced the wiring throughout my lantern so that it could be more centered.

Yay! It looks great!

Plus I still can't believe how much it looks like this $1700 version! I'm pretty happy with my latest update!

Habitat Restore

Last weekend, mom and I took a load of junk donations to the Habitat Restore. We found a new location and decided to try it out. They had some great big frames, a few neat pieces of furniture, and some pretty lighting...I came home with this not so cute lantern

Brass is definitely not my thing....and I am in a house surrounded with it! But I liked the shape of this and figured that I could turn it into something a little more modern.

 I was able to take the pieces apart pretty easily...

Add a few coats of spray paint :)

And then get everything put back together.

 Here are some pendants that I was able to find that resembled my new lantern. They're all a little different. The structure is similar, but the price tag is definitely not!

$485 version

$900 version

$1700 version!

 My sweet dad agreed to come up and help me out for the day. I thought the new light would look great in my hallway. So dad was able to take down this brass chandelier.

As we find anytime we try to start a project...nothing in our old house is to code. Dad pulled about 4 wires from the ceiling and they all looked terrible! Super old, brown, and no clue why they needed quite that many.
We saw a few sparks...but finally got everything connected.

Sooo happy with how it looks!!!

$20 light + $5 spray paint

Not too bad!

UNFORTUNATELY, it's not working yet! As I said, we saw a few sparks...so we flipped the breaker then we weren't able to get the power back to the wires. Dad will be coming back up to look at it again this week with his buddy. Hopefully we'll get everything sorted out. For now, I'm very happy with how it looks.

When we returned from our trips this summer, we had to spend some extra time in the yard. This lovely "tree" was actually a massive weed that grew up right next to our door. Thankfully Rip was able to get it out along with a few more...Yeesh!