I figured that all it would need is some paint. And some chandelier light bulbs. (I found some on amazon.com going for $10/15 bulbs. But I only need 6 bulbs, so I'm hoping to find something cheaper at Wal-mart or Target.)
I wasn't until I got home when I realized that the wire is way too short. Remember I had said that I wanted to swag it so that I can center it on the cafe table? Swagging a light basically just means adding a ceiling hook and dropping the light at another location--in our case above the cafe table. That way we can hang the light a little lower and David won't hit his head against it (yes, there are perks to being short!). At the end it should look kind of like this as demonstrated by our (unpaid) male model (who, I might add, was pulled off from cooking dinner to do this demonstration for you).
Not being electrically savvy at all, I decided to play it safe and heed their advice. Experts on the Internet basically suggested swapping out the existing wire & chain for longer ones. Since many of them claimed that it wasn't difficult, I thought that this would be an interesting way for me to educate myself a little about the mysterious (okay, intimidating) world of electrical engineering.
So I poked around the lamp, opened up some screws and this is what I learned.
So the first thing I did is note what wire I had to buy. Thankfully it was imprinted right on the wire: "18 AWG". Okay, sounds good. There was also a copper ground wire, so we'd need to get that, too. And of course, we'd need to get a longer chain as well.
The next thing to do is estimate how long the wire should be. David helped me simulate where the chandelier will drop from the ceiling (as seen earlier) and we estimated that we would need 5.5' of everything.
So last night, we went to home depot to the "wire-by-the-foot" section. Never in my life would I think I would end up here, but there I was flagging down a Home Depot employee and asking for 5.5' of the 18-AWG wire. "In black, please." I was feeling very professional. I also got the copper wire there. Thankfully, there was a huge chart above the spools of wires that confirmed that 18-AWG is usually used for lighting. Huge mental relief.
Then I was wondering where we would get the chain. I walked around the light section and saw some swag kits that comes w/ wire, chain and a few other things for like $12. No, that's too expensive and the chain in the kit is only 4' long. Plus, I already have my wires, I just need a chain.
Thankfully, David has been exploring Home Depot while I was getting wires cut and he said they also sell chain by the foot. Hooray! So we went to Aisle 21 Hardware, flagged down another Home Depot employee (which took forever) and got our 5.5' black chain. Finally, we grabbed a bottle of oil rubbed bronze spray paint.
So we pretty much have the supplies we need to complete this project! I still need to pick up the chandelier bulbs and a ceiling hook, but those wouldn't have come with the overstock.com chandelier either.
- CL Chandelier: $15
- 5'5 Copper Wire: $1.10
- 5'5 18-AWG wire: $2.04
- 5'5 Black chain: $5.39
- Spray Paint: $6.90
Total: $30.44
Since the Overstock chandelier costs $62.99 (not including tax & shipping), that's at least a 50% savings!
So here begins another adventure. I'm feeling a little nervous to be honest. Electrical is not my world (David claims it's not his either), which explains why neither of us could ever become electrical engineers. But here we are! :)