A Chandelier

Wooo, finals are over! It is time to party! To celebrate, the husband and I finished up our project with the chandelier.
I picked this up at the DI for $9. It had been ripped out of someone's house so we had to rewire it to become a free hanging chandelier. This is also because we live in an apartment and didn't really want to leave it there when we move. :) To be perfectly honest, I was not the one who rigged up the light. I let my husband take care of that so this isn't so much of a tutorial as a... this-is-what-we-did-and-it-worked, kinda thing.

We pulled off the sad glass shades. (I need to think of another project for those...)

Then we pulled it apart to take a look at the wiring. It was simple to pull out the ground wire and replace with the Swag Light Kit we got at Home Depot for $12.
So this is the guts that we kept inside. These are the wires that go to the individual bulbs.
These are the wire nuts. They go on the white and black wires to connect the wires. (So it works when you flip the switch. Nifty).
It's alive!
My turn at the wheel.

This is what I did. I found some Mardi Gras beads at the local Catholic Thrift Store for $1. Just so happens they were white but you can do it with color beads as well. I was just going to paint over them anyway.
So I stuffed paper towels in the bulb cases so that I wouldn't paint them.
My trusty Krylon gloss black paint! There's usually a can or two of this stuff laying around the house at any given time. :p Now, some of you may ask "Why not leave it white?! It's so pretty!" It is! But... I thought the black would make it pop out from the white ceiling a bit more and I've always wanted a black chandelier. I figured, what the heck? Have some fun. It will end up in a kid's room one day anyway.
After I finished with the spray painting, I just waited for it to dry and then added some sparkly crystals I found at Ross for $1.99.

After spray painting I needed something to hide the chain. Now, I do like the look of just the chain but with the wire threading through it, I wasn't a fan. But I also really don't like the chain cover-ups. They're chunky fabrics obviously hiding the chain. So, I went with the next best thing. I wrapped the chain with fabric to pseudo-hide the chain. It's not everyone's aesthetic but I like it.
Simple to wrap up.

Doesn't look half bad.
Here is the switch. I like it for right now because it's a portable chandelier. It's perfect for us as college students because we end up moving a lot. But we're willing to bet we'll be in this apartment for at least another year until the hubby's student teaching is finished. I digress. You probably want to see the final product, huh? ^-^
TADA! Isn't it cute?! The girly in me loves it and one day I will use it to dress up my baby girl's room. (*fingers crossed I actually have a girl one day*). The nekkid bulbs are a little irritating but I have yet to find shades for it. So nekkid they will remain. The chandelier gives us a TON more light. WOOHOO!

So let's recap, shall we?
Chandelier - $9
Swag Light Kit - $12
Spray paint (laying around from another project but usually $2-$4 dollars)
Gems $2
Bulbs (again, laying around but compact florescent bulbs for $1 per bulb ish)
Approximate grand total - $30

Soooo much better than buying a $200 chandelier.

Lessons learned from this little ordeal? Well, the biggest one for me was to take MORE pictures in the daylight time and of literally take a picture of every step if I want to actually show you all what I did! I need to work on these camera skills! I feel that I somewhat failed in this duty and you're left with a mediocre mess of a project. But it's all a learning curve and I hope you'll all just bare with me. :)