A Little Repurposing

As you can tell by my absence - we are really busy and working hard around the ranch.

In July our contractors come back to start a big project on the exterior of the house - we are getting a new roof for the porch, extending it and enclosing it - can't wait.

I'll fill you in on the details of that later Now I want to tell you about this project, that has something to do with the porch.

When we bought the house my mother in law gave us several boxes with stuff "that we might be able to use" but just never got around to looking at….On this trip I did and deemed that a lot of it was yard sale material and I almost put these in the yard sale pile when an idea hit me…

I could make something out of these….just had to see if I could get the other part I needed.

Went to several stores and finally found what I was looking for at the world market store.

Click photo for source

I picked the 30 light set and I'm thinking right about now you are getting an idea of what's going to happen here…

Right!

I'm going to use the jello molds as lampshades!

But I didn't have enough. I got really lucky at the thrift store and got a bunch for less than two dollars, but it still wasn't enough.

I checked eBay and there were a lot to be had there, just the prices were all over the place and I would still have to pay shipping.

Wound up getting the seven I needed at an antique store for 8.-, so so far we are at $40.- for the lights.

Once I got them home and looked at my drill bits I noticed that even my largest wasn't big enough for the task so I wound up getting this puppy (which cost another 40 bucks….any suggestion what I can make to get some use out of it???)

Oh my dad is so proud that his girl likes fancy tools.

I was able to use my new to me drill press that I bought at an estate sale when we first got here.

The only way that I could drill them was by cutting a piece of wood for the inside so it doesn't get all bent out of shape when I secured them with the vice.

After they were drilled I took the bulb out and put the "shade" between the bulb and the socket…some holes were a tad big, others I had to work a bit to make it fit, but over all everything worked out fine.

Now these are my "I'm so excited that they're done and look cool" pics, I'll share better ones when we have them hanging out on the porch

So that's my project - hope you like it! But stay tuned, another idea hit me,  to be continued!!

Aloha A Hui Hou!!