DIY Rattan Light

We’ve been working on the boys room for what feels like forever. Doing your own renovations is both the best and worst. Best because it’s mega cheap and everything can be exactly how you want it (sorry for making you re-do/re-paint/changing my mind on everything for most of our projects Mike 🙈). Worst because when you’re doing it yourself, it’ll take for.ev.er. to get done; everything else in life can and will take precedence over these projects. But I feel like we’re finally nearing the end point with this room. We still have a couple more projects to finish up, and I feel like a room is never completely done…I’ll be forever tweaking and changing things. Or never putting in that one item I always intended too – haa! I’ve had a few of these DIYs to share that have been done for months, but kept thinking I’d wait till everything in the room was finished before I shared them. But I’ve given up on that and will slowly start sharing some of the things we’ve done. Starting with their light.
This room always had one of those ugly 80’s glass light fixtures. You know the kind, the ones that seemed to function mainly as a place to collect fly carcasses. Why though?! I usually tend to go for metal pendant lights, but wanted something a little “warmer” for the space. Lately I’ve been loving basket lights, however the prices on basket lights be like 😳. And I was having trouble finding one that was “short” enough. The ceiling isn’t very high in the room, and I didn’t want to be hitting my head on a low hanging light every time I went in there, so I was struggling with what to use. And then I saw this rattan lantern on clearance at Target and thought, let’s just turn that into their light. So we did. And documented it so you can do it too. Fun fact, not only did we get a light out of that lantern, we also used the “leftovers” to make a basket, a plant stand and the glass vase was used as decor in a mom’s group I go to. Not too bad from one little lantern.Materials:

– rattan lantern (I used this one)
– cut-off tool
– file or grinder
– hot glue gun and glue sticks
– plywood
– jig saw
– drill
– binder cane
– lamp cord kit (we used this one)
– round ceiling box cover
– electrical tape
– scissors
– wire cutters
Directions:

Decide the length you want the light to be. Cut each of the metal supports at this level with the cut-off tool. Take a file or grinder and clean up the ends. Using hot glue, reattach the wood to the metal supports and the pieces of binding cane which were cut.Place the light upside down on the piece of plywood and trace the inner circle. Cut the circle that you just traced out with a jig saw. Drill a hole big enough for your light socket to fit through in the center of the circle. Drill eight 3/16” holes around the circumference of the circle. Using binding cane, attach one end to the light, place a dab of hot glue at this point to keep it from coming loose, and loop around the top of the light and then through one of the holes. Continue weaving the cane thorough all of the holes; secure the end of the binding cane to the light with hot glue.
Place your light socket through the hole in the center and tighten the plastic retaining nut.
Drill a 3/8” hole in the middle of the ceiling box cover.
Decide far you want the light to hang down (leave enough extra cord to make the electrical connection and tie a knot, probably about 6-7 extra inches). Cut the cord.Strip the ends of the wires to expose the metal. Feed the wire through the hole in the box cover and tie a knot in the appropriate place. Using wire nuts, make the electrical connection – make sure that the power is off before this step! Attach the plate to the electrical box with screws.

-Manda