This little ($5) light of mine

Hello there! Can you believe spring is HERE?! Whoo HOO! Hubs grilled out our first steaks of the year tonight and they were SO good. If this keeps up I’ll be picking out flowers for the window boxes any day now.

We had lovely weather -- perfect for spray painting. ;)

We have a light at the base of our stairs that I changed out a few years ago. It used to be the most builder basic brass light, and I replaced it with one that was a little more up to date:

It’s been so long, I have no idea where I got this one – it was most likely Home Depot or Lowe’s. It was waaay better than what we started with, but even with two 60 watt bulbs inside, it barely let off any light.

It drove me a little batty, because this is the one light on our main floor that I have turned on the most – it’s right in the middle of everything.

Well, on a trip to Habitat for Humanity ReStore a few months ago, I found a $5 fixture that had TONS of potential for that spot:

If you have a Habitat ReStore near you, you MUST go! I love that place – but I go (mostly) for the light fixtures. There’s such a great selection of brassiness just begging for a redo!

I got my craft room and master bedroom fixtures there:

Ours is downtown and a drive, so every time we go to the Indy Children’s Museum, we do a little side trip to the ReStore on the way home. ;)

So anyhoo, I was totally thinking of this when I saw my latest find:

That would be the Pottery Barn Gothic Lantern. Mine had more sides, obviously, and it was nine inches wide instead of 12, but it was the same height. And with a cleaning and some spray paint, I knew it had loads of potential. 

So I started taking it apart to spray paint it:

It looks intimidating, I know. :) But it’s not – just remember how it started out so you can get it back together again. I take pictures of the details just in case I can’t remember at the end.

Most of the time, you don’t have to take a fixture apart to paint it, but this one had parts inside the glass that I needed to get to.

I wanted to keep the glass, so I started the seriously annoying necessary job of taping off it all off:

I didn’t get it exactly perfect, because I knew I could use my trusty razor blade to scrape off the excess spray paint if needed.

I took everything outside and started spraying light coats of Krylon oil-rubbed bronze (from Walmart, about $4 I think?) on everything. No primer here – since it won’t be handled I don’t worry about that for light fixtures.

It was when I started spraying the glass part above that I realized I needed to cover the glass on the inside of it as well. ARGH. Duh.

So I did an even less perfect job on the inside. ;) Whatev. It worked.

And I continued my coats, taking breaks inside to cuddle with my three guys -- hubby, the Bub and this little bitty one:

:) He’s so stinkin’ sweet. And he’s a cuddle bug for sure.

Anyway, can I say a quick hollaaaaa to the spray paint peeps for making this stuff dry so fast? LOVE it. You need to let it cure for a little while, but especially right over metal, it dries SO fast.

I got it up in no time and I absolutely love it!:

I love how it throws the light on the ceiling too! (See more about my love of painted ceilings here.) And the glass acts almost like mirrors, so I swear it makes those three bulbs even brighter.

It is seriously about ten meeeellion times brighter than the old one. Really, it lights up the whole main floor.

So the next project is to install a dimmer switch. You know I’d love me some dimmers! I’d rather have a bright light I can dim than to have one that’s always dim. ;)

I love our new Pottery Barn-ish light, and I especially love that their version is $270 and mine was $5.

Uh…YESSSSS:

I LOVE it!!

(Ignore the half done photo wall back there. It’s been half done for about a year now. There’s no finish in sight.)  :)

Have you found any great ReStore finds? Spray painted a light lately? Any oil-rubbed bronze goodness in your house? For some reason it’s gotten harder to find this spray paint – I’ve found it at True Value stores and Walmart. Have you found it anywhere else?

My friend Melissa found an almost identical $5 light! She took the glass out of hers and I love it!