DIY Pendant Light - Part II

10:37 AM

Previously on The Ambitious Procrastinator:


I was working on the beginning stages of turning these lovely hand blown drinking glasses into a pendant light fixture.  I drilled holes in the bottom, attached hardware and now on to lighting it up.  


To do that I made yet another trip to Home Depot to purchase:

Replacement Lamp Cord (Silver): $4.98
Lamp Cord (Silver): $0.30 /lf


(Westinghouse Home Depot)

I already had the white electrical tape, and yellow wire nuts.

This part went by quite smoothly, I honestly thought it would take longer.  Anyway, I used about 4 ft for each light of the lamp cord that i purchased in bulk.  I'm not sure how long I want each one to hang so I just used a little bit extra so I can play around with that later.



I took one end of the cord and split the two wires and stripped about 1/2" - 3/4" of the plastic coating to expose the wires.


  
Tie the two wires in a little simple knot, and fist the other end through the circle at the end of the bulb socket like dis.



Ok, now the IMPORTANT part.  The two wires may look exactly the same.  But don't be fooled!  One is smooth and one has three teeny tiny ridges on it.  The wire with the ridges needs to be attached to the silver screw on the socket.  So get a little cris-crossy screw driver and loosen the screw, wrap the exposed wire around the shaft of said screwdriver to make an almost circle hook thingy.  Then pop that hook thing over the screw so that the wire is going clockwise.  (If you go counterclockwise you will undo your hook when you tighten the screw.)  Then just tighten the screw while making sure the wires stay under the screw.  Pass the other wire to the other side and attach it in the same manner to the brass screw.  



Just as a pro-caution, I've read to wrap electrical work in electrical tape.  The sockets come with a cardboard slip thing but I wanted the socket to be white. It will be slightly visible when finished.  So I gave each socket about 2 thicknesses worth of electrical tape to finish it off.  Now re-assemble the hardware in the glass and you can really see where this is all going.

I also did a test run to see if everything was in working order.  I stripped the other end of the lamp cords and the end of the replacement lamp cord and attached them all together (smooth to smooth and rigged to rigged) with the yellow wire nuts and wrapped them in tape.  Plugged it and and flipped a switch. (sorry no pictures of that step, besides it will all be re-done when I finish)  But here is the test run:



So as you could probably guess there will be one final installment of this tutorial to come. So stay tuned.....

-Nikki


Click here for Part 1 and Here for Part 2.

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1 comments

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