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Don’t Cost A Dime: Entryway Light Upgrade

I have failed you guys. I didn’t take before pictures of today’s project. Oops! I’m always telling my Mom to take before pictures for every project even if you don’t use them and then I didn’t. Sorry about that :) But I think you will get the idea anyway based on the after pictures.

The light in my entryway has never been my favorite. It came with the house and I just tried to ignore it. Then a few months ago, while I was sitting on the couch looking at it, I got a brilliant idea. I figured that the drum shade that was on the lamp right next to me on the side table, would probably fit over the existing entryway light. So I jumped up, ran downstairs and grabbed my tools and step ladder and got to work. This is why there are no before pictures. It was such a spur of the moment thing that I didn’t even think about it. And, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. But it did :)

While I don’t have a picture of the before fixture, it sort of looks like this fixture from Lowe’s. I’m really sorry if any of you have a light like this and love it but it’s not really my favorite. And, mine was worse than the picture, believe me :) So, for the last few months, I’ve just had the shade up and that’s it. The project was never finished because I was wanting to make a diffuser for it and hadn’t gotten around to it. The other day, I finally rectified the situation.

First of all, I took the fixture down (actually Jason did!) and spray painted it white so it would just blend in a bit more. Originally, it was a silver color with black accents and so it stood out like a sore thumb against the white ceiling and white shade. After spray painting I had Jason hang it back up for me. Then I attached the shade. Basically there was a long threaded post that the globe attached to and instead of putting the globe back on I just put the shade up. I had to put the shade on upside-down so it would fit and so if you want to try this it’s best if you have a true drum shade where the top and bottom are the same widths. Then I took a large washer (which I happened to have on hand) and put it over the threaded post so the shade wouldn’t fall off (since the post is smaller than the opening for the shade) and I screwed a nut on to hold it in place. Super simple, right? Here is a close up picture so you can see what’s going on:

Here it is with the shade on it:

And now for the diffuser. I didn’t like that you could see right up into the fixture so I knew I needed something to cover the bottom of the shade but it needed to come on and off easily for hanging and changing bulbs. So I found a piece of clear plastic in my craft room and traced around the shade and then cut it out. It was a bit too big since I traced the outside of the shade so then I just cut it a bit smaller than the line I traced. Make sure you don’t cut it too small or it won’t stay in. Next, I used spray adhesive and sprayed the piece of plastic and pressed some fabric onto it. I made sure to smooth out all the wrinkles so it was just right. Now, because the shade was upside-down, it had the metal parts connecting to the rim of the shade and so I cut notches out of my diffuser so it would fit around them. Then I slipped the diffuser on.

In a nutshell, it’s a piece of plastic with fabric glued on and it rests on the rim of the lampshade. Easy peasy :)

I also had the sparkly trim in my craft room that I added with a hot glue gun. I love to hot glue things :)

And here you can see it when it is on:

So what do you think? Can you still get the full effect even though I don’t have a before picture? Anyone else up for trying this out? I wouldn’t mind finding some more shades and putting them up in some of our other rooms. I will have to start being on the lookout :)

Next up, I will show you my new paint color for the living room tomorrow. I still have to take pictures so I will try and get that done today :)