Making use of un-used items...

Our old apartment didn't have any coat closets, which made us crazy, so we picked up this Ikea coat rack. The old place also didn't have any kind of overhead lighting in the main room, so we rigged up some china balls, aka paper lanterns.  

Well now that we have plenty of closets and light in the new place, this stuff has just been sitting right in the middle of the hallway.  At first we thought maybe we'd use the paper lanterns, but decided to abandon those.

We decided to make a giant lamp to fill up all the space, and add light in the dining room.  The ikea coat rack was $50, I'm glad we aren't just throwing it in the basement or in the garbage.  Alyssa bought the shade at the flea market for $1, and the light bulb cord was only $4 at ikea.  If you wanted to get fancy you could throw in a dimmer.

I started by unscrewing the coat rack hooks, spinning them 180 degrees. 

Then, I tightly wrapped the light bulb cord around the hooks, with the bulb slightly pointing out. I'm sure there are million ways to attach the bulb, but this is the fastest and most simple.   The light will shine the same any way it's attached, when the shade is in place. 

You may have different results depending on what kind of shade you use, but this one sits perfectly down inside the hooks on top of the cord.

It doesn't look half bad! Instead of buying a new lamp we repurposed items around the house.  In total, this over 6 foot tall lamp, only cost us about $55! 

Ps. You see the new dining room table in the first picture?  We're going to post on it soon.