Chandelier Lovin' OR My Bathroom DIY

As promised, I'm offering a few peeks into our home over the summer. Over at A Soft Place to Land, Kimba is having a DIY Linky party and that was enough to motivate me to post.



When we were building our home, I poured over design magazines looking for just the right everything. I discovered that compromise was necessary as many of these things were out of our price range. My creative juices really flow when faced with this sort of dilemma. How can I figure this out? How can I get what I want without paying what they want?

One thing I knew for sure is that in a house full of testosterone, I needed a feminine sanctuary: my bathroom. This bathroom would be a no-holds-barred romantic space full of calm colors, candles, nudes, statues, and to top it off... a chandelier hung over my tub! I collected pictures, it was going to be perfect!

Just like this, with a jacuzzi tub:



Or like this, but a little more romantic:



Or maybe this!



I brought my pictures and all my ideas to my builder, who sent me to my electrician who shot me down on the spot. Some nonsense about "codes" and "danger" and "electrocution" and "death", blah, blah, blah (I'm very sarcastically air quoting as I type this). The Big Guy was like, "oh yeah, a light hanging over water will never do" (Man, I thought he'd have my back on this one!)

So, needless to say, my plans for my beautiful chandelier tub design idea was shot and I set it aside since more pressing decisions needed to be made (round or oval toilet seat? knob or lever faucets? marble or ceramic tile?)

I was pretty bummed when lo and behold my mom bought a fixer-upper ranch and I spent the weekend helping her tear up carpet and gut the kitchen. Over in the corner was an old chandelier. It was covered in inches of dust and dead bugs, with a special topping of splattered paint. It was disassembled and laying in a heap in a cardboard box, but it was definitely a chandelier! A crystal one with the fake candle light bulbs, way uglier than this one:



Dude, I had an IDEA! Mom gave me the mess of glass and bulbs and didn't give it a second thought. I brought it home and the Big Guy looked at it skeptically and re-explained what the electrician had said. Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I filled a tub of water and disassembled the entire thing. I took out the bulbs and pulled all the wires and fake candlestick parts and scrubbed it in hot soapy water. It's so easy, everything either unscrews or just lifts off a center bar.

Now I had a sink full of glass pieces that I attempted to reassemble it as best I could. I was left with a chandelier skeleton with no electricity. But how to make it sparkle? CANDLES! Target has these mini-pillar candles that balanced on the crystal saucers perfectly!

I let the candles burn down to get a nice wonky edge, and the big guy hung the whole thing from a plant hook in the ceiling and VOILA! On a sunny day the room is filled with rainbows!





When I look up from the bath I see this:



When the sun shines through the skylight above it sparkles and sends rainbows across all the walls:




You can see the ordinary ceiling hook here:



But at night is when all the magic happens:




So get out there and start combing junk shops and garage sales for your own diamond in the rough!

Ps (I misspelled chandelier 6, oops 7 times in the writing of this post!)