Steampunk Room Progress: DIY Cage Light Sconces!

Our steampunk room just got a hefty dose of drama, because LOOKIE:

Lights!

I knew from the beginning that I wanted cage light sconces with Edison bulbs, but the cheapest options I could find were at least $150 - and I wanted seven of them. So...

Time for a little DIY action!

Here's one of our completed sconces:

Total cost, including the Edison bulbs? About $22 each.

AW YEAH.

Don't worry, I'll include a price breakdown with links at the end of this post, along with a few tips on how to put them all together.

Dramatic night time shot:

OooOOOOoooo.

I also wanted exposed pipes in the room, if only for decoration, so I love that our piping is actually functional: it houses the new lights' electrical wiring.

We have three sconces each on the side walls, and one on the back wall. The focal wall will have other cool stuff, so I'll just leave that to your imagination for now:

 (That TV cabinet is only temporary.)

The pipes are cheap half-inch PVC pipe, held in place with metal pipe straps. To make the plastic look like metal, I painted the pipes flat black, and then John lightly dusted them with copper and iron spray paint:

To be honest, I'm amazed how well these turned out. The speckled texture is incredibly convincing, and the copper areas look like rust. So cool!

Oh, and as it turns out, 40 watt Edison bulbs do NOT give off much light - I had to have the overhead light on for all those pictures.

Here's what they look like without the overhead light:

So, awesome and dramatic, but sort of just glorified night lights. Heh. When it comes time to replace these we'll go with 60 watt Edisons, but I doubt that will be a huge improvement. I can't complain, though; it's so warm and cozy looking at night.

Speaking of dramatic, here's our new airship in place on the wall:

 We have that small spotlight on it at night, and combined with the Edison sconce overhead, it gives the ship some amazing shadows and depth. Ahhhh.

Ok, now if you want to make those lights, keep reading:

I found that Grand Brass has the best prices (and is the only site that sells friction swivels) so I bought most of the pieces there:

Antique Brass canopy, $3 ea. 

(I painted mine bronze, but you can leave as-is.)

Brass friction swivels, $3.75 ea. 
(There are 2 sizes. This is the smaller, cheaper one.)

Unfinished brass single turn key socket, $5.80 ea. 
(You'll have to scroll a little ways down that catalog page to find it.)


Then, from 1000 Bulbs:

Brass Wire cages, $3.44 ea.

I should warn you: these cages don't fit ANY socket; they're way, WAY too big. I have no idea what the manufacturer was thinking. So, to make them fit your socket, you'll have to crimp down the metal band on both sides, like John's doing here:

To crimp the band, pop it out from the rest of the cage, use pliers to bend it into submission, and then re-assemble. Once the band is reduced by a good inch or so, it should fit the socket nicely, like so:

Shipping from both of those websites is pretty high - an extra $14 each for my orders - so once you account for that, we're now at around $18 each sconce in material cost.

Edison bulbs still average close to $10 most places, but if you're willing to wait on shipping that could take up to a month, you can get them insanely cheap on ebay from overseas sellers. We ordered 6 bulbs each from 2 different sellers (for some reason all the cheap sellers only have 6 total in stock.) Both orders were about $15 with shipping, and both arrived in under two weeks. That's only a cost of $2.50 a bulb! YES! (Full disclosure: one bulb did arrive broken. So order extras like we did.)

The finished sconce.

The only other things you'll need to assemble your lights are basic lamp cord (available for cheap at any hardware store) and two 1/8 inch threaded nipples per light, which will join the socket to the swivel joint (it just screws in to each end), and the swivel joint to the wall canopy. (You can use a nut on the back of the canopy for extra security.)

So all told, that's around $22 per light for materials, and less than a half-hour each for assembly. Not bad, right?

Now, since my last "how to wire your own lights" tutorial seemed to scare most of you off, [grin] I'm not going to do another step-by-step here. You can check that link for how to wire the sockets, though, which is the same, and then putting the rest of the pieces together should be easy enough to figure out. That said, feel free to ask any questions in the comments!