3.11.2010

Jumpin' on the Bandwagon: I'm Building That Lindsey Adelman DIY Chandelier, Part 2

No, I didn't forget the Lindsey Adelman You Make It chandelier of weeks ago, and in fact, I'm sitting under it right now! Success. And really, it wasn't that complicated, but I thought it would be helpful to talk about a few of the steps for those of you considering building it. Here it is as presented by Lindsey Adelman, for those of you who may have forgotten it:



And here is my version, which for exciting reasons I won't show other pictures of. But I think it's a fair job:



So, let's see. Where shall I begin?

The online ordering process was easy with the provided list, with one exception: one of the parts is available through IndexFasteners.com, which only sells orders larger than 50 dollars. It was an inessential piece (part O), and ultimately I don't miss it -- it is meant to screw into two unused holes in the cluster body, which is the place all of the arms come together.

All together, including shipping, it came to $142.46 for shipped parts (I ordered extra rayon covered cord, not knowing how far I'd have to wire it), and I bought a hook to hang it for about $7.00, as well as the twin plug adapter (part P) for about $3.50 at Home Depot. So all told, about $153.00, and about 5 hours in construction time. I'm sure it could be done much faster, but I am quite methodical. All parts laid out:



I put all of the brass components together first, and deconstructed it piece by piece in order to run wiring through. It reduced the number of things I had to figure out as I was wiring. Here you can see all of the parts required to run wiring, in sequence. I was unsure how much excess wire there was, so I was also running the entire length of wire through all parts before cutting, rather than cutting wire to length with an allowance for each arm. This was unnecessary; I would recommend cutting the wires to length, plus a couple extra inches at each end. Save time!



The one area of difficulty in wiring came with the arm with the greatest number of sockets. Where all of the arms come together, you have to run 6 wires through a narrow piece of brass pipe (my buddy Chau did not order the recommended wires, which are quite slender, and went with standard from HD; it was not possible to slip them through). With the slender wires, it's doable, but will take some futzing:



Once I wired all of the arms and screwed all parts together, all that was left to do was twist and cap all of the black wires and twist and cap all of the white wires in the cluster body. Simple stuff! It looks like a hot mess, but observe -- arrange carefully, and screw the lid on. Piece of cake:



The external wiring is so standard and easy, it's intuitive. Et voila!



I completely love it. LoveLOVElove it.

However, in the interest of improving all things, if I were to build it again, I would do a few things differently. There is one component that is only available in chrome (part H, coupling bodies), which I find distracting if I think about it. Steven thinks I'm being silly, which means most likely I'm being silly and it's no big deal. I'm pretty sure no one else sees it:



And I wish I'd gone with different exposed cording. The gold rayon wrapped stuff looks fine, but I wish I'd thought to order something like 2-conductor 18-gauge BLACK twisted COTTON wire from Sundial Wire. In the future, I may make this little upgrade.

2 comments:

THE BRICK HOUSE said...

Great job - I didn't end up using the couplers and I don't miss those little caps either. I have one exposed hole on the bottom...no one even notices.

Since mine was hardwired I didn't use the cord, but there are still some funkiness happening with how it connects to the ceiling that I would one day like to resolve.

Problem is, now its so BRIGHT in my little dining room guests complain. I need to rig a dimmer.

Why can't any project just go smoothly and be perfect!

Anonymous said...

they have brass couplers - not just the nickel plate ones at Grandbrass. What guage wire did you use?

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