Hang A Pendant Light In The Closet, step by step

Looks like I have once again been wrangled into one of Sherry’s schemes. This time it is her “Dude, Get On That Already” challenge (apparently the “dude” applies to me also) where she’s trying to in fact do something with some of the items that we have been collecting hoarding in our spare room. It is a use it or lose it challenge if you will (well, more like a use it or donate/craigslist it challenge). This week’s victim: the light fixture that we rescued from a thrift store in Delaware nearly an whole year ago for a mere $19. That guy simply sat on the floor of the playroom since then, and it was high time we in fact allowed him to do the whole illumination thing again.

He’s made of some sort of resin and in short looks like a big glowing ball of clear spaghetti… but in a cool, kinda ’70s way. Update: we have learned form a savvy reader that it is in fact called a spaghetti lamp and it is made out of spun lucite. Our plans back in Feb 2011 were to ORB the gold finish and hang it in our master bathroom nook. Fast-forward to now and the plan has shifted slightly. Instead, we have given him a new home in our closet.

The closet seemed to be the better choice because (1) the bathroom nook is visible from the bedroom and we figured this big round fixture might compete visually with the other big round fixture in the room. And (2) the bare bulb in the closet was Yawn City.

Ahh, much better:

We got on that! Oh glad day! Gotta enjoy using what you have and upgrading a naked old ceiling bulb. We will dive into more light-related details in a second, but there were some other closet happenings that went on as well…

When you last saw our closet a few months after we moved in April, it was looking mighty clean and organized.

These days, well, let us simply say it had gotten a bit derailed thanks to a certain chihuahua we all know and enjoy.

It is in fact unfair to place the blame solely on Burger. Sure moving his crate into our closet from the playroom closet meant our laundry basket got displaced from it is pleasant little nook. But Clara was in fact the main reason for the move. We too frequently found her playing with Burger’s food, water, and crate – much to Burger’s dismay – so we chose to tuck it away in our room where she does not go that frequently. For some reason Burger enjoys small spaces, so he feels most comfortable with his crate and even his food/water tucked away in a closet or nook (it is simply dry food, so there is not any odor and we thankfully do not have any ants/pests that bother it). So after a year of nook deliberating we declared our closet: The Best Nook For The Job.

To make a long story long, even though this project began because of a light – we could not ignore the other less-than-satisfactory situations going on in here too. And fortunately there was an straightforward answer. See how much spare room I have got on my side of the closet?

Unlike the lady wife, I do not use my whole shoe rack left here by the previous owners. Yes, I know, I am such a typical guy – I have one pair of brown shoes and one pair of black shoes and my flip flops and sneakers live in our shoe bins by the door. Meanwhile, on the other side of the closet, Sherry has sufficient shoes for the both of us. Not that I wear hers. I in fact do not think I could walk in any of them.

So after a bit of couple’s brainstorming (aka: Sherry encouraging me to allow Burger’s crate to pilfer some floor space from my side), I plucked out my shoe rack. And after completing the exhausting task of removing both pairs of shoes from it (sheesh, talk about backbreaking Hands-on) we got down to business.

Sherry pried it apart and I cut down the two long shelves by about 14 inches and…

…we nailed it back together, thereby creating a John-shoe-collection-sized rack.

And the smaller rack made space for Burger’s crate in the corner. So we are glad we got on that. Why it took us 13 months of living here, I am not sure.

But you know what, I truly should let Burger give you the tour – since it is kinda his domain. And yes, this means this post is about to be pretend narrated by a dog.

“Welcome to my bedroom people of the Internet!”

“Here you will find that my crate has been replaced by a clothing receptacle. Apparently my family finds it more essential to have their dirty clothes closer to them than their beloved canine.”

“But that is okay, because now I get more privacy back here in my master suite. Hello? Do you see me here in the back giving you the peeper?”

“Conveniently located next to my sleeping chambers are the dining facilities. Why thank you for asking – yes, I do live the life.”

“Speaking of my delicious cuisine, allow me to indulge myself for a moment.”

“In fact, I’d much prefer my culinary assistant to hand feed me right now. Oh compact human! Come hither!”

Okay, tour’s over. It is John again. That Burger’s feisty, is not he? Anyways, you can see above what we mean when we say that Clara likes to get into his food (do not mind the sticker covered monkey/sock/floor). It is not the worst thing that she likes to feed Burger his food piece by piece… if only she did not feel the need to swirl each piece around in his water dish first. She gets her strange-ness from her mother I think.

Anyways, this post was supposed to be about a light, right? Sidetracked much? Back to that…

Installation was fairly straightforward. We cut the plug/cord off and exposed the wires to make it hardwire-able. Then we picked up a kit at Home Depot that would allow us to attach the chain to a crossbar (though we had to hunt down a canopy at a specialty lighting store that would fit). We left everything gold because we figured since it was in the closet it did not have to match the other fixtures in the room, and we kinda dig the retro gold look for the closet. We can consistently paint it down the line if we get “the bug” but for now we like him simply the way he is.

The room is not truly this dark with the light on, I simply turned down the exposure on the camera so you can see the texture of the light a bit better. And these pics do not even do it justice. It is especially cool looking when it is on. Sherry in fact wants to make a video since she says it is so much better in “real life” so you have that excitement to potentially look forward to…

One of the coolest parts are the little streaks of light it casts all over the wall and ceiling. Like little party streamers or something. We nearly feel like we should have installed some mechanism to make it rotate like a disco ball. Okay, not truly. But that could’ve been lively…

It is kind of a shame that the light spent nearly 12 months in a pile in our playroom. But at least it is hanging up in all of its glory now! Oh and as for how we figured out the right height for it, I simply stood under it as Sherry hung it at distinct heights and we picked one that gave me a little room – so it hangs around 6’4″ from the floor (our ceilings are 8′ high).

Oh, and if you are at all curious as to what happened to all of the excess chain that we did not use (it had like 8 feet for swagging) – you can see Clara get her Jersey on with it over at the house Life today. And yes there is a video. And fist pumping. Predictably, I am mortified and Sherry’s elated.

So did any of you folks cross something off your “Dude, Get On That Already” list this week? Did you reorganize a closet or otherwise rope your husband into a challenge? How about ghost writing a journal post for a chihuahua? Simply me?