DIY Painted School House Light

I set out to make my own school house light, for 1/3 of the cost of this one.  I’ve seen simple replica schoolhouse lights at home improvement stores, Wayfair.com, and Overstock.com, all for a fairly inexpensive price tag.

I purchased mine at Home Depot for $50.  It’s quite a bit larger than others I’ve seen, and it accepts up to an 100 watt light bulb, which is a plus for us because this light functions as the primary light in our kitchen.

I grabbed my Frog Tape and prepped the light shade by wiping it down with rubbing alcohol.  I taped off the top and bottom bands, and got to painting with opaque glass paint.  Michael’s has an awesome selection of Martha Stewart glass paints.  I used gloss opaque glass paint in Beach Glass.

After the top band dried, I taped off a thin line below the top band and painted it.  The nice thing about painting on glass is that if a little bleeds through the tape, you can easily scrape it off with your fingernail.  The difficult thing about painting on a glass that light shines through is that it’s quite easy to see the brush marks when the light it turned on.

For how much money it saved me ($100 for the size I got!), it was still well worth it.

You can find all of my furniture refinishing projects here, along with all my tips and tricks for painting furniture.