Barn Light Repurpose

Hey Everyone! So one of the first things that I demanded we change out when we moved into our home was the dining room light. It was one of those awful, generic, creepy "nipple lights" that gave off this eerie blue glow every time we turned it on.

UGGGGGGGGG WHY?!

Why anyone would put this in a room on purpose is beyond me but I decided this needed to go pronto. Now I have a recent obsession with barn lighting and was really hoping to install a beautiful vintage barn lamp into our new place. These things will knock you back a ton of money though, William Sonoma selling some for as much as $600. Pipe Dream? While perusing one of the greatest stores on Earth, Second Use Building Materials (seriously, if you live in Seattle you need to check this place out), we found this awesome old barn-looking light for $50. YES! Problem? It was very.....brass monkey.

That's a lot of brass

I was so excited when I found it that I immediately sent a picture to all of my family and friends expecting a lot of "WOW HOW COOL" responses. Instead, I got a resounding "wtf, why would you buy that?" Ok, ok, DIYers you know when the time comes to show off your DIY prowess. First off we bought a cheapy canopy kit from Home Depot. When removing ugly wall sconce nipple light things and changing it out with a chained light, you'll need the canopy kit to cover over the hole. You very well may have to swag the light as well. Our nipple light was placed in a really awkward place, between the kitchen and the dining room so in order to have our new light hang directly over our dining room table, we needed to swag it.  Here's a fantastic tutorial on light swagging from Pretty Handy Girl. 

kind of ugly canopy kit, painting can make ugly things pretty

So now to get rid of all that brass! We chose a beautiful rustic copper color to spray paint the light and the ceiling kit (you can pick up this and multitudes of other colors at Home Depot).

Now I know a lot of people will tell you how to make very fancy, upscale spray painting stations, boxes, whatever. We had just moved into our house and were living off of top ramen and cardboard so I wasn't really in the mood the try and figure out where everything was, hence, the very very lame backyard spray painting set-up (AKA packing paper and very fashionable outfits):

pajama pants tucked into socks and work boots, we really know how to do things around here

I just had to get another look at this outfit. I didn't even know he had these things in his closet.

You don't want to spray directly onto whatever you're spray painting. For this lamp, Jason held the can about a foot away to get a clean, even coat. It took two coats to get it to where I wanted it but you can certainly play around with the color (do be careful though of heavier coats without enough drying time, the paint can start to slip and create wrinkles). I'm in love with the finished product and honestly, I actually like the light form better than the crazy expensive ones I've seen online.

So now instead of having a horrid nipple light, shining its creepy blue light down on us, we have a beautiful barn light showering us with a warm glow every night: 

hot cocoa status warm

DIY Anthropologie Library Letters

Greetings Blogosphere and thanks so much for dropping by Pine + Palm! I figured what better way to start a blog than with a good old fashioned DIY tutorial on the greatest thing on Earth: BOOKS. Over the summer I was in my favorite "get creative ideas and knock them off" store (also known as Anthropologie) and I found these beauties:

WHAT. BOOK LETTERS. GENIUS!  (For the whole alphabet, check out the Anthropologie Library Letters) I fell so in love with this idea that I decided that I immediately needed to make one for the library in our new home (at the time a huge bare room). To start, these books are none other than old Reader's Digest Condensed Books (check out Reader's Digest Condensed Books on Amazon). I've ordered a few off of Amazon with pretty designs but to start, my sister Carly found a really pretty one at a Goodwill for $1.99, a good place to start! For all you interested Bibliophiles, this was the 1983, Vol: 5 Edition that featured abridged versions of Godplayer/ The Suitcases/ The Time of the Hunter's Moon/ Stalking Point...oooook. Voila!

I started out by marking off the areas I wanted to cut out on the book itself in pencil :

Mistakes in the "cut-out" zones are allowed!

Then off the the garage to have my husband Jason start chopping! I would have cut the thing up myself but he was already out in the freezing cold garage, wielding a saw so I decided to let him in on the fun. First we created a pretty low budget set-up using blocks of scrap wood to attach the book to with clamps

We decided that the easiest tool to use would be a jigsaw. You could also use a Scroll Saw (in which case you wouldn't really need to low-budget wood piling) but the jigsaw was out and Jason was feeling confident so why not?

A picture of confidence

It took him a little time but I think the end result is fantastic and this was cutting a bit more detail than the original library letters. A word to the wise, the skinnier the book the better! Now I know all you serious readers are raising your eyebrows and saying, "skinny books? ME? *scoff* Never!" know, I know. We are talking about condensed books in the first place though, they seem to be the pretty ones and I guess we shouldn't feel so bad about cutting them up anyways. But back to my original point, the thicker the books get, the more difficult they get to cut straight edges (especially when you're doing more intricate curved areas). So now Carly has a beautiful C for her new apartment and I have some pretty ones of my choosing from Amazon on the way to play with for the future library! 

C is for Classy!