A Light Bulb Moment

We are currently building a shop/ bath house/ store front. It is a long work in progress. I will do another post in the future showing the trip so far. For today's post I wanted to show you what I designed and built for the bathroom. I had seen some lights made out of ball canning jars online. The idea was to make a hanging light out of a glass canning jar. The owners had basically hung several jars together from their cords and formed a light. I loved the idea and showed it to Mr. Farmer. He thought it was kind of a cool idea but didn't like the jars just hanging together from their cords. He thought it should have more stability. I searched the internet for more ideas and found a fixture in a lighting store that used galvanized pipes. Hmmmm.  My wheels started turning and this is what I came up with.

 As you can see, the bathroom doesn't even have a ceiling or finished walls, yet. But we needed light in there. This bathroom is for Mr. Farmer's family when they come camping at our place. We needed a bathroom and shower that kept kids out of Grandma's camper. We had to get the walls up and a working toilet before everyone came for the Memorial Day weekend. It is also helpful having  this bathroom near the pool so the kids can change or use the toilet when necessary without traipsing through the house dripping wet.

The jars are new, Ball half-gallon and cost about $1.50 each.  I used lamp cording to wire it. I purchased the keyless sockets on ebay for 50 cents a piece. The pipe was the most expensive at about $40 for all the galvanized pieces. So the total for the entire light fixture was roughly $50. So obviously, hanging the jars from their wires would have been much cheaper, but this is unique to our bathroom. Something no one else has. That's the way we  like it when we design something.

The only problem with this design process (says Mr. Farmer) is that now I see light fixtures made out of everything. I have been auctioning and coming home with all sorts of things to turn into light fixtures. We like things to look rustic, so antiques are perfect for this. So far, I have come up with antique apple baskets, scythes, and various other barn/ farm items. I'll post when I get them made.