Mason Jars

Up next on my project list was a mason jar chandelier. I of course saw it on pinterest and really the only place I could do anything with a light like that would be above my kitchen table. I would say it only took a Saturday but because of the changes I made, it ended up being a week long project. I originally had built it for only 8 jars, but once I started looking at it, I decided to do 12. The pottery barn one has 16 but my table is def not that big.

The hardest part was finding the electrical wire that holds the lights. I wanted wire that had like a cloth over it, but it costs almost 6-8 dollars a foot. So I went to ikea and they had these light fixtures that were only about 3 bucks and came with 15 feet of wire. I spray painted them a walnut brown, but the paint like never dried. It literally was the most frustrating part of the project! I also used the same stain that I used on my table for the 2 by 4s.

Other than finding the right wire, the second hardest thing to do was figuring out how to mount it to my ceiling. It’s not like home depot sells a kit for hanging your homemade chandelier, so after thinking and thinking, I finally came up with an idea. It’s been hanging for about almost a month, so far it has worked and I hope that it continues to, cause it ever falls, it will be a horrible mess for sure!

I daisy chained all the wires together, remembered to cut the power in the kitchen, hooked them up and they actually worked!!! I was so thankful too, cause without some nice wire cutters it took more than a while to strip, twist, and tape over 24 connections! Once it was up, I had the lights in and they were super super bright…apparently 60 watts is too much- so I had to get 40 watts and it’s a whole lot better!

Out of all the projects I’ve done over the last little while, this is def my favorite. I catch myself walking by and thinking, that looks kinda cool. Plus I’ve kinda been using it as a backlight. One of my favorite things about having my Christmas tree up for a whole year was putting the lights on at night, so now I like turning these lights on, for just a little light. The pottery barn light costs 400 dollars and I ended up spending just under 100 bucks. The most expensive part is the keyless light socket, which are about 3 dollars apiece! If anyone wants one, I can build another no problem, just for the price of the parts and a pair of wire cutters.