light turned candle holder

On one of our recent trips to Resource York, my husband and I stumbled upon a very rusty & dusty light. I loved it right away, with it's swirly glass and all. Adam looked at it, decided that we could avoid rewiring it by turning it into a candle holder. Sold.

We got home and took that sucker apart. It was dirty and had dead bugs in it, but with a little soap and water, it was beginning to look better already.

With a little elbow grease and steel wool, Adam scrubbed up the black metal frame. 

When it came to the lid, we decided that it was too rusty to salvage.

Bummer, right?! Well, not entirely...

The rustiness inspired a new idea: turn the light over and make a new base for it.

We made a template for the base and cut it out of some leftover rough cut lumber.

When it fit snuggly into the light, he drilled a few holes in it to allow some air to get in.

pre hole drilling

We got excited and put a candle in it right away. We let it burn for about 20 minutes until we heard a crack. The top piece of glass cracked from the heat [sad day]. Again, bummer...but we decided that it would be better without that small piece of glass on top because it would allow for easy candle access. 

We broke out the remaining glass off the top and this is what we ended up with:

Since it was still a little rusty looking, we decided to spruce it up with some paint:

TA DA! Much better.

We plan to use it on our patio table this summer.