Redeemed: I've Always Wanted to Do a Before and After

Over the years when I have seen before and after photos of DIY projects it has made me want to document one of my own before and afters. I finally remembered to take a before picture AND I actually finished the project in a timely enough manner that the before/after pictures were still relevant in our home. Ha. When we moved into our home almost 7 years ago there was a glass light fixture hanging in the foyer. There was nothing particularly "wrong" with it but it was never anything I loved. It always looked dusty, it hung too low (people were always hitting their heads on it) and I wanted something besides brass. Literally for 7 years I kept my eye out for a light fixture that would fit that space. Granted it had to be something rather inexpensive to fit into our budget but I never could find just the right fixture. So a couple of months ago, after seeing some light fixture do overs on Pinterest, I decided to see what I could do with our light. I realized that inside all that glass there was a simple hanging light shouting to get out. ;) I had Danny take the light down from the ceiling. Then I put the whole light fixture inside a couple of garbage bags and tied the bags tight. I placed the garbage bags out in our backyard on our picnic table and with my handy dandy hammer I beat out the glass. After the first hit with the hammer I knew there was no turning back. It was a tad bit scary but I knew the worst that would happen was that I would have to go buy a new light. =) Once I could tell that all of the glass had been hammered out I started pounding on the metal seams that held the glass in place. They actually crumpled in and fell apart much easier than I thought they would. When I took what was left of the fixture out of the garbage bag I had to work a little more to pry off bits of the metal but overall it was looking pretty good. I used our hand sander to smooth down near the top where everything had connected. After all of that I used several coats of a satin nickel colored spray paint. The last part was finding tiny enough lamp shades. I bought some small black ones at Garden Ridge but they were too large. They wouldn't all three fit on the fixture. I looked a few more places and finally found the ones I used at Lowe's. They only had this light color and they barely fit but they work! It is fun to have something that looks new and up to date that didn't cost me much money.

*BEFORE