Chicken Wire Basket Turned Pendant Light Fixture

We are in the finishing stages of finishing our first floor open space concept remodel. Part of that remodel was to be able to accommodate a long farmhouse dining table that my in-laws gave us. Now that the table is in and decorated and hubby rewired the ceiling for new lights, I needed to come up with some cool lights that fit the space and our style. That’s when I stumbled across this at Ollie’s.

To the normal human being it looks like a cute wire basket to store things in. However, to a delusional DIY’er like myself it looks like a light. You don’t see it? Well take the lid off, take the cloth insert out, flip it upside down and insert an old lighting unit. You see it now? Needless to say, 2 of them came home with me

I had the perfect light inserts sitting down in my basement. My bestie saved them for me because she knows me way too well and knew I would make good use of them. They were a matching set in her house when she moved in haha!!  (I already removed the lights from the 2 smaller glass pieces, but just to show you what they looked like.)

You can see why she wanted to get rid of them. They are pretty atrocious. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be used.

I took the lighting units out of the glass, took the bulbs out and spray painted them with one coat of primer and then two coats of an off white.

Hubby replaced all the wiring in the lights since they looked pretty old. I then put the light up inside the basket part and weaved the electrical wires up through the top of the basket to keep the light in place.  I bought extra chain links at home depot to weave the wires through up to the ceiling. The chain links not only help disguise the wires but they add support to the light.

After the light was hung (I let hubby do all things electrical related) I was ready to put the lid back on the bottom of the light. For this you will need a pair of pliers and some really thin craft wire to keep the lid in place.

I twisted the wire in about 4 places, enough to keep the lid tight, and then cut the excess wire off.

The lights are amazing. I loved the way they came out. Not only do they fit in with our whole theme, they give off excellent light and they only cost 11.99 each

They were the perfect balance to the support beam we had to put in.