The life of two scientists, creating a small home, in big mountains

Solar Chandelier for a Romantic Anniversary Dinner

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By tomorrow, Slav and I will have been married for four years. Four years! It went by so fast, but we also accomplished so much together – like getting the second dog, starting new careers, moving to Colorado, and getting our first house. For our anniversary celebration, we are gonna go to a highly rated Polish Restaurant. Then we are gonna drink some nice craft beers in our backyard.

The “new” old fence made us extremely happy about our backyard and totally brought a whole wave of backyard fever, especially after Slav got his dream grill. Since we do not have patio furniture yet, dinner-for-two will not happen for anniversary this year. But I do want to make our evening ore romantic, by adding some nice lighting to our completely dark backyard.

What about this solar powered chandelier?

We have a chandelier which used to hung over our dining table in our NC apartment. There is also a big apple tree in the middle of the yard with horizontal lower branches. It is meant-to-be.

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We hung it up on the branches to test the look. I liked it. Slav on the other hand, thought this was the most white-trashy thing ever. He even called his mom (!) to report how trashy I had become. Ironically, mom liked my idea and was totally on my side. #nastywomenstaytogether

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Is it trashy? For someone who wears cargo shorts 24/7? I think not.

With MIL’s blessing, I got to work. The current candle tubes were too tall to mount solar light directly on, so I had to find a way to make them shorter.

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Each candle tube consists of a white plastic cover on the outside, a paper filler against the plastic cover, and an electrical assembly in the center.

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The plastic tubing and paper filler simply slid off, leaving the electrical assembly which were screwed on to the chandelier arms.

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I cut the wires near the candle cup , then screwed off the assembly by twisting the bottom screw:

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For our particular chandelier, I ended up with the wire assembly, a washer, and the candle cup for each arm.

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A wire cutter is all you need really to get o this step. A pair of scissors will do too.

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The bottom screw from each electrical wire assembly holds down the washer and candle cup tightly. So I snipped them off to reuse them. It was also a great base to glue the solar lights on:

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When I snipped these screws off, I left a bit lip with the bottom screw. After it secured into its place, I bent the lips a bit, so it can cuddle around the end of a solar light and hold it in place:

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We got these lights off the internet. Make sure to test them before gluing them to the chandelier!

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You can bend the metal lip in any direction to accommodate the solar lights. In our case, they held the solar light in place and straight, which made gluing process a breeze.

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A dash of super glue would do. We held the solar lights in place with some tape, let the whole thing dry on the patio overnight.  But really, 15 minutes should be enough if you are using a fast-dry glue.

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I took the tape off next morning and these lights were holding on pretty well.

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Isn’t it pretty? We used a long chain to hang it so we could lower it if we wish. Our dinner will be so fancy! Happy anniversary, Slav!

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