Spring ’24 One Room Challenge | Outdoor Oasis Week Five | Outdoor Lighting

It’s WEEK FIVE of the Spring 2024 One Room Challenge, and I still have SO MUCH to do before the final reveal on May 22!!

I’m getting this blog post published a few days late, so let’s get right to it, and I’ll show you the updates for this past week:

Choosing New Outdoor Wall Lights

The existing wall lights on our deck aren’t terrible, they’re just a little dated, and not my style

There are a couple more of these wall lights on the back of the house, one lighting the outside staircase from the basement, and another outside the balcony of the deck off of the main bedroom. We also have a tiny little covered balcony, off of the foyer

So I went in search of finding something a little more updated, but not totally modern, since the style of the house is traditional. After looking at so many lights, and pinning them all to my Pinterest Board, I landed on these from Amazon!

They’re obviously not yet installed, but will be in the next couple of weeks. I love the style – they’re sort of an elevated farmhouse look – but to me, they also look a little French 😉 The inside of the shades is gold, so I think that will look really pretty when the lights are on at night. They were also on a huge sale at the time I ordered them for about $15 each!!

Café String Lights and Poles

A few years ago, I think it was December 2020, I sent my husband out to buy some new Christmas lights for the outside of our house. But, it was during the pandemic, and of course, there were very few Christmas lights left on the shelves of Home Depot – I guess everyone wanted a little extra Christmas light and cheer that year. So my husband came home with several boxes of these:

Obviously, not the Christmas-ey look I was going for! I think we ended up hiring a Christmas light hanging company that year, who were able to source lights for us, but my husband never managed to return the many boxes of café lights, and we have had them stored in our garage ever since! Luckily, I’ve always loved the look of these on a back patio for the rest of the year, and I think they also give off “Parisian Café” vibes -which if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile – you know is one of my biggest inspirations! So when I embarked on this One Room Challenge, I knew I would finally have the opportunity to use them. The plan is to hang them across the deck from a center point, and hook each string to one of about five of these Metal String Light Poles:

Since they can either be attached with clamps to the deck posts, or staked into the grass, I’ll also be able to use them on the lower patio area is to help light up the grill area. They come in packs of two poles, and I calculated I’ll need a total of seven, so I ordered four sets.

I’ll also wait to install all of these until much closer to the final reveal, but at least for now, I have it figured out, and have everything we need to get it done.

Fixing up some Outdoor Lanterns

My husband is not what you would call a vintage shopper, in fact, he’s not much of a shopper at all! But one day, several years ago, he was driving past a little vintage shop in Purcellville when we were working on a fun house flip project there, (Purcellville is a super cute, little country town, about 30 miles West of us) and he saw these two very large metal lanterns sitting outside. He bought them, and we used them outside the pool house at our old house. I had found very large, real wax, pillar candles for them, which I think maybe we only lit once or twice in all the years they sat out there. Lighting them wasn’t that difficult, but just meant we needed to have matches on hand, and then open up the lanterns to light them. I threw the old candles away in the move, but the lanterns were still in pretty good condition, so we brought them to our new house, but they’ve also been stored in the garage until now. Here’s how they looked before I started fixing them up:

These lanterns are pretty unique, because they are so tall (about 36″), and I think with new paint and candles, they’ll make a nice statement on the deck or patio.

I started out by prepping them for paint with some light sanding, paying attention to the areas with rust, and then brushing them off with a stiff-bristled brush. Next, I very carefully removed all of four of the glass panels from each lantern, and stacked them up to clean later.

I already had one partial can of Rust-Oleum Flat Black spray paint, and purchased two more. From spray-painting many other projects, I know that several, light coats, versus a couple of thick coats, gives the best result. So I started with the partial can I had, and gave them their first coat, using up the rest of the can:

I sprayed them again, using up most of the second can:

I was now down to the second purchased can, and had a feeling it wouldn’t completely cover the lanterns before it ran out, and I was right:

So back to Home Depot I went to purchase more spray paint. I decided to buy two more cans, but the third can did the trick to completely cover the white. I also did a quick cleaning of all of the glass, but haven’t put the panes back into the lanterns yet, because with the glass, they are super heavy. Once I know where I’m going to set them up, I’ll clean the glass again, and install the glass when they’re in place. I also found some new flameless candles for them, which I’m really happy with. I needed to find candles that were as tall as possible, and although the tallest ones I found were these which are 18″ tall, but they don’t come with a remote control (and are very pricey), so I went with this two-pack, which are 14″ tall each, and come with a remote. Having flameless candles and a remote, I hope will encourage us to use them when we’re outside much more frequently than we used them before. I popped the new candles in to try them out and give you a sneak peek of how they look – minus the glass – on the deck.

I still plan to add some fun LED lights to the garden and maybe on the tables, but I’ll add those soon! For now, I’ve got the main lighting figured out!

Don’t forget to check out the latest updates this week from all of the other ORC participants!

Here is my ORC progress

Week 1  ||  Week 2  ||  Week 3  ||  Week 4  ||  Week 5  ||  Week 6 ||  Week 7  ||  Week 8