Garage Makeover Progress: New Lighting

We actually got quite a bit accomplished on our garage project this past weekend, including installing some new lighting. Made with $30 collapsible wire baskets from CB2!

I've totally got a thing for vintage-industrial lighting, which just happens to go great with the overall feel I'm hoping to achieve in our garage. But I wasn't so much a fan of the prices of the fixtures with enough light sockets for our purposes, especially since we needed two fixtures to replace the old lighting.

For example, this one was pretty, and had six light sockets which was great, but at $249.99 x 2, that was just way too much to spend on garage lighting.

 via Lamps Plus

I liked this one too, but it only accommodated three 60W bulbs, and I wanted as much light as possible out in the garage. $169.99 x 2 was a step in the right direction though.

 via Lamps Plus

This fixture had the best price of all at only $99 x 2, but unfortunately it only came with a single light socket.

via Shades of Light

 

So instead I found some fixtures without shades on Amazon that had three 100W sockets for only $65.52 x 2.

via Amazon

Which, as you've probably already guessed, we combined with the CB2 wire baskets. Pictured with a cat for scale, these are some good sized baskets, at 24" wide and 12" tall. Perfect to use as wire drum shades!

Before we put them together, I did opt to spray paint the outsides of the light sockets oil rubbed bronze, just so they would blend in a bit better with the rest of the fixture. 

Crumpled half sheets of paper stuck inside the sockets helped protect them from the paint

 

Then literally all we had to do was place the wire baskets upside down over the light fixture rod and wire them up where our old fixtures used to be. And put in some light bulbs, of course!

So fancy! And bright!

And a huge upgrade from the dim and boring old fixtures.

We'd also been considering having the light switch for these lights re-wired. For whatever reason, the only light switch to the overhead lights was located all the way across the garage from the door to the house, over next to the door to the driveway. Only the light on the garage door opener could be turned on and off from next to the door to the house. But first we're trying out this wireless switch that we were able to stick on the wall next to the door to the house. For only $21.79, it's worth a shot if it saves us a couple hundred dollars on an electrician. These wireless units seem to have mixed reviews, but so far, only a few days in, we're pretty happy with it.

And while we were at it with updating the lights and switches, my husband went ahead and installed outlet extenders around the garage, to take us from two outlets to six on each wall. He also took to opportunity to rewire the outlet guts with new hardware and fix any reverse polarity that existed on a couple of the outlets.

This past weekend we also purchased lights for above our two new workbenches. For the side with the cabinets above the workbench, we got two 24 inch LED under cabinet light bars.

via Lowes

For the other side we got a pretty standard hanging florescent fixture. The price was certainly right at $14.98. It did need a little sprucing up though.

From basic black to oil rubbed bronze in a matter of minutes. A small detail, but now it will go with the wire basket lights a bit better.

For now we're holding off on putting up these lights until after we put up the pegboard above the workbenches, since it will be easier without them in the way. But I'm really looking forward to a week or two from now when we'll never have to worry about having enough light to work in the garage again!

Anyone else ever made their own light shades out of something unexpected like a basket before?