I bought my first house back in the summer, and all I can do is sit around and daydream about all the things I want to do to it. I have a bit of an obsession with DIY’ing and home projects. Its deep in me y’all. My house is older, built in ’56, and the updates it does have are all builder grade at best. That just wont do. There was this little boob light in my hallway and I wanted it gone pronto. A schoolhouse type fixture is what I was dying to have, but everything was outside my budget. Enter: DIY painted schoolhouse light.

When it comes to changing a fixture out in an old house, you never really know what its going to be like up there until you take off the old one. Luckily this fixture was semi new, so the wiring for it was up to date-ish. I bought this light from Lowes for $40, and some gold spray paint. The black paint and bonding primer I already had, woot woot. Also check out the tutorial from Little House of Four, I loved her hack to use the rubber bands to get the lines.

I got the light out of the box, and kept all the parts together, cause I am super great at throwing away necessary parts. Wrap the globe in rubber bands, spacing them apart to get my stripes the way that I wanted. This took a lot of moving around, so just mess with it until you get it the way that you want. Once you have your rubber bands in place, put on your first coat of primer. I used this bonding primer, the same one that I used on my DIY kitchen floor. Latex paint wont stick to glass in the long run, so primer will be necessary if you use latex paint.

Let it dry and then do a second coat of primer. I let it cure over night, then put on the first coat of black paint, Tricorn Black, by sherwin williams. In retrospect I needed to do a third coat of the black. Ohhh well. Once it was all dry, I carefully removed the rubber bands. Take extra care doing this so you don’t accidentally peel off any paint. As you can see in the photos, a little of the black paint came off a bit. This doesn’t really bother me, since once its up on the ceiling, you can’t really see that.

And there you have it. A brand new DIY painted schoolhouse light for your sweet lil house. I absolutely adore it, and am super happy every time I catch a glance of it in the hallway.

Are you a DIY’er? Ever tried a project like this before? Let us know in the comments, or send us an email!