DIY Barn Pulley Pendant Lights

A couple months back when we were living in our old apartment, my roommate Adele walked by this home store with this incredible display of pendant lights hanging from pulleys. Adele took a photo so that we could recreate the idea in our new apartment. Problem was, when we started looking for pulleys, the only ones large enough were pretty expensive. On a whim, I asked my mom if we had any old pulleys back home and she told me that I could have some of the barn pulleys from both of my grandfathers’ barns and everything worked out better than I ever could have planned. 🙂

The process for hanging these pendant lights was really similar to the process that I mentioned in my post about how to hang a chandelier for renters.

Barn Pulley Inspiration:

Image sources 1, 2, and 3.

Photo sources 1, 2.

What you need to do the barn pulley lights:
– Barn pulleys (You can get these on Ebay.)
– Swag hooks
– Drill
– Pendant lights. I got mine on sale at JC Penney’s, but this is really similar.
– Jute to hang the pulleys from the swag hooks

To start, you need to measure where you want to hang the pulleys. We found this was helpful to actually hold them up and mark on the ceiling with a pencil.

Next, the drilling. Might want to wear some sort of goggles or ladies’ sunglasses when you’ve got ceiling drywall falling onto your face. 🙂

After that, stick the swag hook in the hole and slip the light through. For the smaller pulleys, you can take the light apart at the bulb. (It was tedious, but we had to do that for the small ones.)

To get the cords to hang straight down the wall, we used the metal pieces that came in the pendant light kit and drilled them into the wall at measured intervals.

What the cords looked like on the wall once we were done. Since we couldn’t hide them, we thought it’d be cool to make them part of the whole presentation.

🙂

Adele and I got the doors leaning against the wall out of a construction dumpster that was right next to a bus stop. We put on some old clothes and braced ourselves for the embarrassment of digging in a dumpster while people look on. To our surprise, these nice men actually helped us get the doors out of the dumpster and they told us what treasures they were! While Adele and I carried the obnoxiously heavy doors back a HALF MILE to our apartment and then up four flights of stairs, so many people offered to help us. It seems if you’re willing to look like a fool carrying old-fashioned doors, New Yorkers are pretty nice. 🙂 (I also bleached the bejesus out of those doors when we got them back in the apt.)

Out of all the DIY apartment projects we’ve done, this might be my favorite. Once we had the supplies it was definitely one of the fastest projects. For more DIY home projects, go here!