The Golden Globe

One of the things I was most excited about adding to our new home was a chandelier over the dining room table. As I started gathering lighting situations that I liked, I fell in love with this:

Artic Pear Chandelier by Ochre

 

If it's good enough for Felicity, it's good enough for me.

But that fell WAY outside of the budget, so I continued my search. I created a board of "Chandelier Potential" on Pinterest, and eventually showed it to Henry. He picked one that he liked, but...turns out I didn't like that one anymore. My bad.

Then I found this image:

Fabric Designer Amy Butler's House Tour on Apartment Therapy

And my mind was made up. So I tricked talked Henry into it and we headed to IKEA to purchase this guy:

Ikea PS Maskros

...and some Gold Spray Paint (I chose Rustoleum Specialty Metallic in Gold). I set up shop behind our garage on some cardboard I had saved (probably from previous Ikea purchases) and painted all 181 pieces, front side and then back:

I used almost 8 cans of spray paint ($4/can from Home Depot. You can apparently order 6-packs for $21.97 here) and it probably took about 6 hours just to do the painting. About 1/2 way through the process, my neighbor loaned me his spray can grip/handle thingy, which was a game-changer:

Image from here

I bought one on my next trip to Home Depot. It was around $3 there, right by the spray paint. Otherwise you can find one here. If you are spray painting anything for more than 5 minutes, you want one of these! The paint went on really evenly and dried quickly. This was my first real spray-painting experience, and everything I read emphasized thin, even coats, so that was my goal. For more tips, see: Young House Love.

I did the painting over 4 sessions of about an hour and a half each. Once they were all dry and blinged out, Henry installed the base into the ceiling (if you need help with this, there are lots of tutorials online, like here. Just be sure to turn the power off before getting into the box!) Then I got to work putting all the pieces together. It is a little tedious, but the giant thing was only $90, so it was well worth it to me. And here we have our great ball of fire:

Please ignore the mess. It's hard to believe, but those Bananagrams don't put themselves away.

 We LOVE it! It is a really cool focal point in the room, and to me, the gold makes all the difference. The paint still looks great (it's been a few months) and the pattern its shadows make on the wall and ceiling is fun. I think this light would also look great in a bedroom, playroom, or entryway. At under $140 for the whole thing ($90+tax for the light and $35 for spray paint and nozzle), it was a much better deal than any of my other favorites. Anyone else recently added light to their home? Spray painted like a crazy-person?