DIY Industrial Light Fixture

When you purchase an older home, you inherit a lot of dated interiors and fixtures. Especially light fixtures. At my kitchen dining area, I inherited a beautiful red stained glass light fixture that is unfortunately falling apart. In it’s place I plan to install a DIY industrial style light fixture.

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The original red stained glass fixture was falling apart.

The lead was pulling apart from the top of the fixture from the weight of the glass panels and I was afraid we would have a crash one day soon. I personally really like the fixture but my husband didn’t and always complained that it was hanging too low for him – he is well over six feet so that is a common problem for us.

Since I didn’t know how to repair this fixture and he wanted a different look, I went shopping online for a more clean, retro, and industrial fixture for our breakfast area. I found that I kept coming back to the clean lines of this fixture I found on Shades of Light called the Loft Pendant.

We plan to add more stainless steel fixtures and details to our kitchen area in the future so this fixture really fit the look we plan for our kitchen area. I printed a copy of this fixture for a discussion with my husband and to put it on our future shopping list. He of course thought it was the perfect new look for the retro mid-century breakfast area we both want and I told him I would purchase it online very soon. Well…there is a good thing I waited to actually buy it …because I already had a similar fixture just like this in storage that I had completely forgotten about!

I had previously brought home a industrial style light fixture in white from a thrift storage for my daughter’s room. Trying to encourage her to make her room her own style, I allowed her to paint it or decorate it any way she chose.

Then we delayed installing it for some reason or another and she didn’t like it anymore.

At the time, she had painted it yellow and stenciled some type of message on it. She had fun painting it but then she decided she didn’t want it in her room after all.

Recently I pulled it out of storage and figured I could remake it – again – in to a more industrial style for my kitchen dining area.

DIY Industrial Light Fixture

She had used acrylic paints so I tried an old trick I learned of using fingernail polish remover to remove acrylic paints. The paint came off without any problems!

After cleaning it up and letting it dry, I used my favorite silver spray paint, Rust-Oleum in Satin Metallics Alluminum to repaint the white metal finish that was hiding underneath all that nasty paint.

I loved the new look immediately!

My husband used the existing hardware from the stained glass fixture to hang the new retro industrial style light fixture in its place (not to mention that the ceiling is 17 foot in that area so it was smarter to use the existing chain and canopy already installed).

So here is my new, and very inexpensive light fixture hanging a little bit higher than before in place: