Hi lovely friends! Have you ever seen a designer piece and thought, “I can totally make that for a couple bucks”? I had one of those epiphany moments one day when gathering some dining room inspiration ideas, and I am so excited to share the results with y’all!
I’m not going to lie, this was a bit of a tedious little project, not hard, just tedious, but it was so worth it to achieve a similar version of the Restoration Hardware French Empire Rope Chandelier that costs $1,595 for around $30. (Woot woot!)
I had originally found this black chandelier for really cheap on Craigslist and it was pretty great all on its own. But I can never leave well enough alone if I know I can create something more visually interesting, especially something with texture! (I’m a texture girl all the way.)
Supplies Used:(Affiliate links are provided below for convenience. For more information, see my full disclosure here.)
Chandelier – This one is similar to mine that I picked up on Craigslist.
The rope and hula hoop cost a total of $18 at Big Lots. (Yippee!)
Before I got started on the rope part, I cut my hula hoop with a hand saw and poured out the little beads inside…so surreal to my inner child…like seeing the stuff inside Stretch Armstrong (remember those?!)
It was at this point I had to stop working with the hula hoop for a bit because my two year-old FREAKED OUT when she saw me cutting the toy that she thought was for her. Oops. Bad mommy.
So after the toddler meltdown was over and she was down for a nap (a DIYer’s favorite time of the day, am I right?), I checked the size of the hoop inside of the chandelier and made my second cut to make the diameter I needed to fit it snuggly. You might be better off waiting until you have done the rope step on the chandelier for this part, but I wanted to be able to really visualize it and make sure my plan would work.
Then, I took the hoop out and flipped the chandelier upside down to start wrapping the 1/4 inch rope and hot gluing it around the arms. I used a long wooden spoon to hold the end in place to spare myself any finger burns. Go slowly at first and apply glue liberally so the rope doesn’t slip.
Those arms took me a solid two hours to do. Whew! For the middle, I hid the rope ends of the arms by wrapping more 1/4 inch rope around them and continuing up. And it is a constant battle with those hot glue spidery webby strings. Don’t you hate those? If you have a spider phobia, they’re especially difficult. I find glue strings for days after a hot glue project…so pretty much all the time because I’m attached to Pinky the glue gun. Yeah, I named her. We have a deep friendship. 😉
Ta da! I was very tempted to hang it just the way it was here and it would have looked great, but the little craft-addict voice in my head said to keep going.
Then, I tackled the hula hoop by wrapping it in 3/8 inch rope. You could use the 1/4 inch size, but I was close to running out at that point.
When I got close to the end, I positioned the hoop back into the chandelier and super glued the ends of the hoop together. Then secured with duct tape.
Once I finished wrapping the rope around the rest of the hoop, I called it a day and saved the last step for later.
For the rope swags, I cut a piece of rope the length between the top of the chandelier to the base of one of the lights. Then cut 7 more pieces that same length.
I hot glued the first piece to the top of the chandelier and held in place with pressure for a minute or two.
Then hot glued the other end to underneath the hoop below one of the lights. I pressed it with the long wooden spoon as it cooled and dried. And repeated for the other chandelier arms.
Once all of the 8 swag pieces were done, I wrapped 3 rope pieces around the top to hide the ragged ends and finish it.
To make sure the ends of the rope under the lights were secure and better held the hoop in place, I wrapped and knotted a length of twine on each arm.
Then hung it up!
I love how much brighter our dining room is now. The rest of our room is still really blank but I’m working on it. The goal is to at least have chairs in there by Thanksgiving. (A huge project that I’m slowly chipping away at.) I’m still playing my just-moved-in-7-months-ago card.
I love how well it goes with our foyer too. 🙂 After this project I thought of an endless list of other possibilities that could be done with rope too that I’ll have to share with y’all down the road. It’s amazing what this stuff can do!
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