new lights diy

In addition to the diy bed I made, I also came up with some new lights. I have had the sweet and simple twig and exposed bulb lights for years now and they served me well, but I felt like it was time for something a bit more polished to go with my more grown up bed situation.

I had a whole different plan originally, and then when I was at Ikea to pick up some additional storage furniture (more on that later- why did the have to go and change the most popular piece they make so it now no longer matches???) I spotted the elusive Ranarp lamps which have been sold out everywhere. They had all of the iterations of this beautiful light, the floor, task, hanging and this clip on wall sconce which I grabbed two of without another thought. I also picked up two frack mirrors and hoped that what I had in my head could actually be made into a reality.

It was actually a pretty simple process. I took apart the lamp and removed the actual cord and light from the more industrial shop looking clamp style wall mount. Then I augmented the hardware a bit so that it would screw onto the accordion arm from the frack mirror. You can see below what it looked like when I was testing out the parts and deciding how I wanted the light to be oriented. 

Then I took it apart, taped off the switch and plug on the light fixture, and took it all up to my roof to apply several careful coats of gold spray paint. 

Next it was just a matter of putting them back together and attaching them to the wall once the bed was finished. There was a little debate about how far to the edge of the wall I wanted them to be placed, but a few weeks of living with them this seems to be perfect. 

They ended up costing about $25 each to make these, not including the spray paint which of course I already had on hand. However seeing as I was planning on sourcing the cloth covered wire and all the lamp parts separately, I think it would have ended up being much pricier if I had made something similar from scratch so I am very thankful that I happened to go through Ikea at a time that these pretty lamps were available. Now I just wish I had somewhere to put the floor version so that I had an excuse to get one of those too.