Pendant Lamps

Made of 3/4" and 1/2" maple and 1/4" Birch Plywood, stained with a medium red mahagony and polyurethane finish. Illumination is by 25-Watt Candelabra bulbs (one per "light box").

While this is classified as a woodworking project, there was just as much, and maybe more, non-woodworking time spent on this project. The first phase of the project was actually the 3D modelling and drafting plans with specific dimensions to work from. I got about 90% of it visualized, but initially was not clear on exactly how these things would hang from the ceiling or exactly how I wo-uld wire them. These were worked out during the process of construction and underwent a number of revisions (in my mind).

The pieces for this lamp are very much like one of those three-dimensional puzzles you have to put together in the right shape. In fact, it would require very little glue to hold together, which is good in case they need to be disassembled for redoing the wiring or something. However, this quality meant that the cutting had to be fairly precise.

As mentioned, the trickest part was designing the way in which these would hang from the ceiling. I had no pictures or evidence of how the "store bought" ones tackle this, so I was on my own. The easiest way was to design them to fit into a typical lamp ceiling box. What I came up with is more elegant than my first two designs, but still a little clunky. On the positive side, these brackets can hold about 200 lbs, which is likely way more than the ceiling box itself will support, both of which far exceeed the actual weight of the lamps. The hangers are in two pieces: the hanger itself has a bracket to attach to the ceiling box, and a U-hook to hang the lamps from; the hanger cover is the other pieces that slips over the hanger and hides the hardware mechanisms.

To match the decor and other furniture I built for the living and dining rooms, I used the same wood and same stain as the other projects to get a dark red wood finish.

I debated with myself on whether to use an oil stain (looks slightly better) or a polyurethane varnish finish (more durable). I decided on polyurethane because I believe that it has better thermal properties and some of the finished wood is going to be very close to the light bulbs.

There is also actually some regular latex paint needed. The "shades" are a very light color to reflect the light better, and they appear to be a blue-ish grey in the product images. We picked out a color that was more light blue than grey, but it looked pretty good. Also, this paint is actually continued around on the side edges of the "wings", which actually gives it a very pleasing appearance and ties the wood and paint colors together well.

Next to designing the hanger, figuring out the wiring was the next major challenge. I did not want wires showing, so wanted to hide them, but in a way that would nake it easy to replace and not be overly complicated. I am fairly pleased with the solution I came up with which uses a channel on the inside edge of the main posts, and then I cover the wires with a thin dowel embedded in the channel. The dowels are held in with chaulking, so they could easily be removed if it had to be re-wired.

Assembling all the pieces was an exciting phase of the project: when it all comes together. I first had to install the light bulb sockets into the light boxes, and the wires would be attached after they were affixed to the main post (which already had the wires installed running down their length).

So, the lamps are assembled, all we need to do now is install them. Simple right? Not so fast. We currently have a single hanging lamp and now we need two. The single one is in the middle of the table, and now we need each offset from the center. This means we need to remove the old ceiling box, add support beams for two new ceiling boxes and then re-route the electrical wires from the old to new location. And you cannot do either of those unless you start cutting sheetrock (since I could not access the space from the attic).

The final pain in the butt was re-popcorning the ceiling to match the existing texture. The stuff in the cans can be mader to work, but unless you know how and have a lot of experience, you will waste a lot of money getting the experience.

With the fresh paint dried, all we had to do now was hang the lamps, attached the woring and put the hanger boxes over it. The final result was very, very pleasing, so despite the challenges, was very worthwhile. Here's the photos of the finished project.