Rustoleum + twine chandelier makeover

Here comes another house project! Again, with the grainy phone pictures, because we still can't find the charger for our real camera. But whatevs. You'll get the gist of this fun and extremely cheap way that we made over our dining room chandelier.

Finished product (to inspire you to read the rest of this):

Yay!! But back to beginnings.

When we first looked at the house, this was the light fixture that was already here:

I won't make any negative comments here except to just say, that this was not working for me. Not my style; not the style of the sunny farmhouse kitchen I was imagining. But I couldn't really think of any easy ways to do a DIY update on it, so I assumed I would just have to live with it for awhile until I could make or buy a new one.

Just for perspective, here's a couple more shots of how the light fixture sits in relation to the kitchen and living room. These were taken when we first walked through the house - none of this is our stuff.

You can see how the chandelier becomes the eye's natural focal point in this huge room. It had to be something that I wouldn't mind looking at all the time.

Looking into the living room (from on top of the dining room table? So confused by this picture.)

Anyway, you get the gist of the space.

So as some of you know, we bought our house long-distance, from Minnesota, so the next time I saw the house was two months later, when we pulled in at 3 AM after driving 14+ hours straight from Chicago. And even in my sleepy stupor, literally the first thing I noticed when we walked in the door (besides the yucky smell of a house that had been shut up for a month) was that the chandelier was different. For whatever reason, the homeowners had taken down the other one (perhaps it was a family piece?) and replaced it with this one:

cropped from a picture of the cabinet painting project...the best before picture I could come up with.

And again, here's half of its brassy brightness:

And actually, my first feeling when I saw the different light fixture was relief - because I liked this chandelier much more than I had liked the other one. It's a timeless & classic shape that wouldn't stand out too much (in a bad way). It's a chandelier that many, many people have in their dining rooms. (Do you have it? :D) I was good with that. But...I wasn't loving the brass finish. Not for my dining room, anyway. (One designer whose work I love says that she "loves brass things more than she loves food," but I am not singing her song in this scenario.)

So anyway, as soon as I saw it, I thought it would be a pretty straightforward Rustoleum rubbed bronze spray paint project. Like chalkboard paint, this stuff is ALL over Pinterest and I'm hardly being original here. For around $3, you can use it to transform pretty much anything your house (doorknobs, etc.) into updated-looking wrought-iron-style metal. It works just like regular spray paint but has a metallic finish.

A DIYer's best friend.

Eventually the plan is to use this stuff on all our doorknobs, and I even have an ingenious idea for how to do it without removing them. However...that is for another day.

So anyway, Nate agreed that the Rustoleum and the chandelier were a match meant-to-be. One day while I went out to work, he asked me to make him a honey-do list for the house and I put this project on it, mostly on a whim, thinking there was no way he'd actually have time to get around to it. It involved taking down the chandelier which sounded to me like a huge pain.

But, I need to always remember that my husband thrives on challenges, especially when they involve serving and loving me in dramatic ways. (He is awesome.) So by the time I got home, the spray-painting was done and the chandelier was already back up, as though it had never come down at all!! Because of the surprise element, I have no photos of the spray-painting process and I also didn't take a picture of it at this stage...but it made me so happy to come home and see this brand new looking light fixture in my house. Yay husband!!!

...Until I got up close to it. At which point, I realized that he hadn't quite taken the pains that I'd probably have taken to protect the white candlesticks from the paint. (Remember when I talked about how Nate does the hard work, and I do the picky detail work? Yeah, this is why.) He DID try, but they ended up covered in black, which he then (thoughtfully) covered back up with white paint, and they looked like this:

Look closely and you'll see all that white paint, covering up the black paint. (The bottom black part doesn't show when the candle is inserted.)

It wasn't super obvious from a distance, but I knew that this was going to bug me.

I couldn't in good conscience be upset with Nate, after he worked so hard to do something so thoughtful and that would have been a huge pain for me (and he really did do a great job on the rest of it). So I started brainstorming about solutions for covering up the white parts.

A few days later, we were at a garage sale and I saw a big pile of this gorgeous woven twine. (Is it weird to think that twine is gorgeous?) I grabbed it for a couple dollars. Nate was quite happy about it...he for functional reasons, and me for aesthetic ones. I can't remember if I thought of the idea first before I saw the twine, or if the twine inspired the idea...but I definitely knew what I wanted it for. I had probably seen something like this on Pinterest somewhere, but if I did, I can't remember it. All I know is that I started imagining how the candlesticks might look with some pretty twine wrapped around them.

After I had actually finished the project, I found this beauty while perusing West Elm's site:

Currently $189 on sale. Mine was $5. (It's different...I know...but the price comparison was too good to resist.)

...So my twine-wrapping efforts are officially approved by the design gurus at West Elm. Awesome.

Anyway, on my birthday, when I got my creative spurt of energy, I took on the twine part of this project and it probably took about an hour. I won't go into much detail because it's probably pretty self-explanatory (and this is not really a tutorial) but here's basically how it went down:

First I unscrewed the lightbulbs, and the white plastic parts came right out. Before getting started, I cut several pieces of electrical tape (because it's what I had handy) and stuck them on the edge of the counter, so I'd have them ready to keep the ends of the twine in place. The first time I didn't do this...and no sooner did I get the twine all wrapped around, then it all unwound itself. So anyway...I got the tape pieces ready.

I took my awesome nontoxic superglue (called Liquid Fusion - get it at Joann's) and put a bunch all over the white plastic. No real method to my madness here. I then held one end of the twine with my thumb, and wrapped it around the white plastic as tightly as I could. The glue takes awhile to dry so you can adjust the twine as you go to get it how you want it.

I had to be kind of tricky about taping the cut end of the twine down with my one free hand, to hold it in place, so that then I could cut off the other end without letting it go. I definitely preferred doing it this way, rather than pre-cutting a specific length of twine ahead of time. This way I didn't have to mess with it being too short after gluing it on. It appealed to my figure-it-out-as-you-go flavor.

Anyways...if any of this is still making any sense without pictures...this is what it looked like after it was wrapped and taped:

I tucked one end of the tape inside the white plastic tube, then taped it over the loose ends. I used a second piece of tape perpendicularly to hold down the first piece, just for good measure. I liked the electrical tape because it had a little stretch to it.

I had to leave them all like this overnight to dry, because my glue is a little slow-drying. (But again, I preferred the slow-drying because then I could adjust the twine as needed.)

This is what they looked like in the morning, when I took the tape off:

So pretty!!! See, isn't that braided weave gorgeous? (Can you even see it?) 

I put all the candlesticks back in, and there it was!

Again, the Before:

And the After:

You may notice that the light bulbs got some spray paint love too. Real life DIY.

I love it!! I don't have a really pretty overall dining room picture, but I think you get the idea. For around $5, I have a dining room light fixture that fits my style and is much prettier (for my taste) than what I had before. It will be perfect with the big farmhouse table we're working on, and also coordinates nicely with our kitchen cabinet hardware (still installing the last of those - you can see a sneak peak in the picture above).

And most importantly, it makes me happy when I look at it. Yay!!

A few days later, it's holding up well. A couple ends of the twine are starting to come loose, so I'll have to reglue those. No biggie. I'll probably try a hot glue gun for that, due to the quick-drying factor. We'll see how it lasts over the long haul..but for now, I will enjoy it and be happy to have one more project crossed off my list!