DIY Basket Pendant: A Tutorial

I have always enjoyed the allure of bold and beautiful statement pieces. In addition, I have always had a thing for interior decor of a grand scale. If you have a similar design fetish, you know “beautiful” and “grand” make for a hefty price tag. However, when determining your home’s future “investment pieces,” naturally some items end up on the chopping block, and you’re forced to look for alternatives. Fortunately, this leads to a few amazing DIY projects that, looking back on, you couldn’t imagine your home without! This definitely holds true for the DIY basket pendant I bring to you this week.

While researching items for my sister’s dining room design, I fell in love with the beauty of robust basket pendants. Especially those that appeared in kitchen and dining areas. They have a way of bringing a bright and natural essence to formal designs or areas that may seem stuffy.

However, I was reminded that grand beauty came with a grand price in this case. No matter where I looked, I could not find a budget friendly version that I was happy with. Also, I could not convince myself the “investment piece” option should be redeemed on a basket pendant. Nor did I want to.

Therefore, I got to work on my DIY options, and once again, I am so happy I did!

As you may know, this project occurred in 2 stages. The basket was stained prior to converting it into a pendant light. That tutorial can be found here.

Now let’s move on to creating this DIY basket pendant.

Here’s what you’ll need:

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• Basket (of your choice), weighing 4 lbs or less
• Westinghouse pendant light kit
• Hole saw or snips
• Tape
• Marker
• X-acto knife
• Voltage detector
• Wire cutter and stripper

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Turn Off Power

I cannot stress this step enough. It is THE most important step in the process. Locate your home’s fuse box, and turn off the power to the room in which you’ll be working. I turned off the power in a few surrounding rooms as well just to be safe. Next, using your voltage detector, double check that all power in the room is indeed off.

I must preface this tutorial by saying that I am NOT an electrical professional or electrician. I chose to DIY this project for convenience, and performed electrical research before I was comfortable with approaching this project. I suggest you do the same.

The tutorial below details the steps I took to install my own basket pendant, and should not be considered certified professional instruction. If you are even slightly uncomfortable with attempting any of the steps in this process, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT. I recommend you contact an electrician to complete the installation.

Prepare Basket

First, tape an “x” on the base of the basket, in the center. Next, place the pendant head down in the center of the tape, and trace around its edge. Now using snips or a hole saw, cut or drill a 1 1/4 inch hole where the pendant’s head has been traced. This will serve as the opening for the pendant tip, eventually connecting to the light bulb.

The hole saw may not provide a clean cut. In this case, clean it up a bit with your X-acto knife.

Prepare Pendant

Unscrew pieces of pendant holding the white canopy in place.

Determine how long your pendant cord should be and cut off any excess with your wire cutter. I wanted the pendant to hang 34 inches above the table, therefore I temporarily placed the pendant head in the center hole cut, held it 34 inches above the table, and measured the cord from the pendant’s base to the ceiling.

I then added about 4 inches to the measurement before cutting. This gave me a little extra to work with as a safety net in case I mistakenly cut wire in my stripping process (next step).

Now, cut away 1.5 inches of the white wire casing at the end of the cord. Be careful with this step, piercing the cord lightly with your cutter. You don’t want to cut all the way through to the wire, just the white casing. Three wires will be revealed: white, black and green (ground wire).

With your stripper, strip away 1 inch of casing from each wire. Again, you must have an extra light touch with this step. Depending on the quality of your wire stripper, it is possible to cut through the copper wires, which is not something you want.

I pierced the plastic casing with the stripper, and proceeded to peel it away with my fingers. Once this is done on all three wires, you should have about one inch of wiring exposed.

Remove Current Light

Remove your current light. If you have a standard builder’s grade light, simply twist off the tip of the light and remove the glass cover.

Unscrew the light bulb and pull down the silver base. Next, unscrew the wire connectors from the white, black, and ground wires.

Finally, unwrap the ground wire from the ground screw, and proceed with removing the bracket.

Install Pendant

Replace the old bracket, with the bracket supplied in pendant kit. Be sure to place pendant securing screws (silver) in the inner holes of the bracket. The junction box bracket screws should be inserted in the outer open slots of the second bracket piece.

Unscrew the green grounding screw slightly, and wrap the green wire around the screw. Next, wrap the house ground wire once, tightly around the grounding screw and green wire. Tighten the grounding screw.

Now, connect the pendant’s black wire to the black house wire by placing both side by side, straightening together with fingers, and applying the orange wire connector while twisting clockwise. Repeat this step with the white wire.

Next, tuck wires safely into the junction box. Then lift canopy and screw on securing pieces to hold canopy in place. Lift canopy to ceiling, matching up holes with the pendant securing screws. Apply the white screw nuts to each side.

Attach Basket

Next, insert the pendant head into the base of the basket, and secure with the retaining ring. Finally, attach a light bulb. You are now free to turn the power back on and test your beautiful new DIY pendant light. If you’re anything like me, a squeal of happiness is also in order at this time.

 

As you can see, making your own pendant light is actually exciting. Now that you have completed the installation process, you can move on to creating additional pendants with more customizable options. You may also want to consider a DIY lampshade, which can also be converted to a beautiful pendant light.

However, once you begin to explore these options, you may not want to spend money on a pre-made lighting option ever again! I consider this a happy problem to have. Are you planning on creating your own pendant light? If so, I’d love to hear about it below!