This DIY should technically fall under Renter Hacks because if I owned this place I would have simply hired someone to remove this ceiling fan and install a pendant lamp and call it a day (I don’t mess with electrical). But sometimes having constraints forces you to get a little creative and that’s just what I did.
It’s not that I hate ceiling fans, though I do have a love/hate relationship with them, but there happen to be not ONE but TWO ceiling fans in a very small space competing for my visual attention and every time I walked into the room I heard Justin Beiber’s voice in my head saying immediately NO, immediately no.
My entire downstairs living area is an open floor plan of kitchen-dining-living room, but it’s not very big at all. The high ceilings help make the space feel larger but the kitchen ceiling fan and the dining room ceiling fan were just a bit too much. You can get a feel for it in the photo below which I had from the original listing and it STILL doesn’t really show just how close these two fans were.
SIDEBAR: Anyone remember the tiny kitchen with no drawers in my townhouse way back in 2008? WOW! Memories. Luckily, this kitchen is bigger than that one, but not by much.
Back to the Lamp…
I originally wanted a George Nelson bubble (pendant lamp) but 1. They’re expensive and 2. I would have had to remove this entire situation WHICH, like I said above, I did not want to do. SO I had come up with a creative solution and my first thought was a large round paper lantern, but I didn’t want it to look well, cheap, and I still would have had to figure out a way to get it around all the attached light fixtures…
My next thought was to take two lamp shades and somehow attached the bases together and create a ’60s style pendant shape and even use rope to create texture and depth and so they wouldn’t look like lamp shades, but the problem was STILL trying to get the shades around the existing fixtures, which I couldn’t do. I ended up cutting up two different lamp shades trying to get it to work, which both ended up in the trash.
When I finally thought about my old paper pendant lamp that I’ve had for ages and have used in 3 different houses (it’s still in the kitchen of the last house I lived in), and remembered it arrived flat, and almost in an accordion fashion (or like those paper party decorations), you open it and pull it around the wire pendant base and snap it closed. So I searched paper pendant lamps and found a handful that were cute and might have worked but none were large enough.
And this is when I finally had an idea of how to make my own version.
Here’s What I Used…
- Arch Pleated fabric shade. We used this in our arched bedroom window, but I assure you, it doesn’t come “arched” so it works perfectly for this project
- A hammer and nail (or something to pierce a tiny hole)
- Regular old hole punch
- Shower curtain rings (I could only find these detailed ones, which made it a little more difficult, so look for the solid smooth ones) Or any large metal circle that opens all the way up and closes tightly
- Scissors and a razor blade
Steps…
MAKE SURE YOUR FAN SWITCH IS OFF.
Begin by removing the blades of your ceiling fan… and then the arms (or remove the arms first while still attached to the blades and save yourself a step!). It takes a little more work to get the arms off, but it’s a must if you want your pendant shade to lay correctly.
*ALSO NOTE: Unless your light has a dimmer option, you’ll probably want to make sure you get lower wattage bulbs just for a nicer glow through the shade.
Remove your shade from the box and with a nail and hammer, mark and create a hole all the way through one side of your shade.
Using the tiny hole as a guide, punch larger holes through to the end.
Run your shower curtain ring through your holes.
It will look like this, but you’ll need room for the pole so…
Remove the ring (or skip that step above) and using your razor blade, cut off the inner corner at an angle.
Test out your shade by clasping the ring around the pole. Pull your shade around until it meets itself on the other side.
You’ll notice that the cardboard piece at each ends makes it very stiff. If you want more of a CONE shape, leave that in and use the peal and stick to close it together.
I wanted it to hang more organically so I cut out (or carefully rip out) the cardboard pieces and then glued the edges together. Use clips to keep it together until it dried. Once the shade had less stiffness, it automatically just folded and draped over the edges of the ceiling fan motor.
Once it was dry, I used scissors and cut it to the length I wanted. I left it at a bit of an angle because I just liked the look, but you can cut it however you like.
Start cutting low down and go up and up and up slowly so you don’t cut too much off too soon. If you know your length ahead of time, you can cut it BEFORE you install it. Once you glue the edges, it’s up… this is why I cut mine while already up, but you can measure and cut it prior. This was all by trial and error so I had to wing it and figure it out as I went… but I was really pleased with how it turned out actually. It’s not my George Nelson bubble but it gives similar vibes 🙂
And…Voila!
Check out my DIY Scalloped Base Round Table if you haven’t yet!
See it here with the kitchen fan.
Have Fun Lovecats!
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DIY Rope Pendant Lamp / How-to Disguise Old {Ugly} Ceiling Fixtures
