homelifescience: Make your own outside deck Chandelier!

So summer is coming up! We built this lovely outside deck and I am fascinated with finding accessories and stuff for it. It drives my poor husband nuts trying to hang everything. I saw an outdoor chandelier at Lowe's from about $60 but that was too much for my budget.I like the idea of solar lights as they are no fuss and come on when its dark! It only everything was that easy. :) This year I also have been trying to make more presents for my Mom. She really likes when i make the gift rather than just buy her something. I thought that this might be a great present for her also as she has this amazing outside pergola at her house.

I came up with an idea to create my own chandelier from an old light and some of the solar walkway lights. I could not find a tutorial, so I just made it up. I hope that this little tutorial can help you make one of your own.

I purchased this light from the Habitat for Humanity Store for $5.00. I forgot to take a picture before I started, but here is early on in the process. I was removing all of the wiring for the light. It was very very gold. I was a little worried about the ball on the bottom but it actually turned out great.

Each light on the chandelier had a white tube that held up the blub. I pulled them off with pliers.

I then used clippers to nip off the metal and wire that sat above the actual base of the light. I tried to nip them off close, but it turns out that they need to be completely removed for the solar lights to sit right.

Nipping off the metal

Puling out the wire

We had to move to the garage and pull off each metal bit. It was the hardest part. I also took apart the light as much as I could so that the spray paint would cover each section well. It also made it easier to pull the wire out of the middle of the light.

Realizing that we would need to pull of the metal bits for each light

My husband working on pulling off the metal. It was a huge pain!

Here is the light all pulled into bits.

For the solar light part, I purchased the small solar walkway lights from Target. Each light was $2.00. I pulled off the lower metal piece which left me with the top plastic part and and the light.

Fantastic Blue!

I got this great teal/blue color from Home Depot for absolutely no reason. We were in Home Depot, I loved the color, and my husband said just buy a can. It was $3.95. When I started this project I decided that it was going to be a great color for the light. It's bight, festive, and a great color!

I sprayed each part of the light separately. To save some money, I even sprayed the chain that came with the light rather than try to buy a new chain.

To spray paint the light, I stuck it upside down into a shoe box so that it would stand up on its own.

Blue everywhere!

I sprayed each item lightly and let it dry. I ended up doing about 6-8 coats on the pieces. I wanted them to dry really smoothly so I was really careful when I sprayed the pieces.