"Spruce" up your apartment

Kill some time.

The folks over at Apartment Therapy are always coming up with ways to improve the space in which you live. I found this one particularly appealing and plan on adding it to my list of planned weekend projects (housewarming gift Ashley! ;)

For more ways to fill up your weekend doing something more productive than playing videogames or nursing a hangover, shoot over to Lifehacker's Weekend Projects section.

From Apartment Therapy:

Here is how Kevin describes the process:

- Chose the branches I liked

- Cleaned them up by removing all the little twigs that werent attractive
pulled of any loose bark

- Placed the branches on my dining table so that when I stacked them I could do it to match the table, and the bottom was "flat" when it was hung

- Screwed the branches together - first drilled a pilot hole - and used small "bullet" head wood screws

- Bought some lamp cord, small candelabra sockets, some 1/4 IP nipple, and a light canopy at Cliff's Variety hardware store here in SF (any good hardware store would have the parts)

- Drilled a shallow hole a little smaller than the 1/4 IP nipple and twisted them in to the hole

- Wired the all the candelbra sockets together ("daisy chained") and screwed them onto the nipples

- Covered the sockets with plastic candelabra "candle" covers

- Suspended the whole thing using thin plastic-coated cable....the hanging wires were passed through 2 small pulleys and attached to the light in four places so I could balance it back and forth to get it level.

- Ran the electrical to a canopy I bought...connected to the "daisy chain" on the lamp with small wire nuts, and hung it up

The whole thing cost me $35 in lamp parts from my local hardware store and about a couple of hours to make!

We think it looks amazing - nice job, Kevin and congrats on the new chandelier!

Thanks to Apartment Therapy & Craft Magazine