Foyer Light Fixture - DIY 

Our foyer is a small room, with a sloping, bead board ceiling.  Encased along one side with French windows, and open down the other to the dining room the room feels visually large.  Originally a portion of the exterior porch that wrapped itself about our cottage, the foyer's a bit of an eclectic mix. When it came to choosing a light fixture, I couldn't find anything I thought would coordinate with the dining room chandelier, yet have a bit of "edge" to live well in the foyer.  Isn't it wonderful when you can't find what your looking for? Defining moments when your forced in to a creative mode, like it or not, and when that happens - often good things result.




Mr. GDC and I went about antiquing one day in Houston and happened upon a salvaged, metal basket.  When I saw it, I instantly thought; that's it!  You know how something simply comes to you, like a bolt, out of the blue?  Snap!  Invert it, atop a small chandelier, add a few shiny crystals, and it will be the perfect light fixture; a bit flash, a bit industrial, a bit architectural.  So, we drug it home.


The search for the chandelier was a bit difficult, we had to locate something petite that would fit beneath the inverted basket.  Finally a trip to our local big box store, yielded the perfect fit; Hampton Bay "Estelle" 3 light, chandelier.  We purchased the fixture, brought it home, and then realized the hole in the basket was much larger than the top of the chandelier. Inverting the basket, it would slide down the shaft of the chandelier. Dilemma. 






Knocking about the big box store, again, and again - Mr. GDC happened upon a grinder blade, 4" in diameter, with a hole already in the center. We could unscrew the ring bolt at the top of the chandelier, slip the blade down the wiring,  attach the ring back affixing the saw blade to the top of the chandelier. Finally invert the basket allowing it to balance on the blade.  Ingenious.  We gave a coat of black spray paint to the blade, just to finish  it off, and put the fixture together. It worked, our little scheme.





Once the basket was inverted over the chandelier,  I didn't like the handles hanging down. We snipped them off with bolt cutters.

For the flashy bits - a box of gifted rectangular prisms. 98 prisms hooked inside the little spaces of the basket later -




In order to "marry" the foyer to the chandelier in the dining room, I decided to add three strands of beads to the chandelier. Our inherited chandelier that came with the cottage, is dripping in prisms, and beads, as seen below-





I wired three strands of beads from the inside top, swaging them down to the arms of the chandelier.  I finished off with a few prisms borrowed from the dining room chandelier.






Hello, lovely. 

I'm happy with the end result. She's definitely one of a kind. A fine "How do you do" to guest, and a warm hug to welcome us home to our cottage.

Until next time, all the best -  



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