Wire Basket Hanging Lamp

For a long time now, I've been looking for the perfect lamp to hang in the corner of our living room. With no overhead light, the room can get really dark in the evening -- which is sad, because Scott loves to sit in his wing-back chair for FHE and while I play the piano, and it's just too dark there! Recently, while browsing Pinterest and random design blogs, I had an epiphany. Actually, I found someone else's cute idea and became enamored.

I LOVE wire lamp shades. Like this one, from West Elm:

And this one, from Etsy:

I started searching for the perfect basket to make my own, but man they can get expensive! There were a ton of cute ones on Ebay, but I wasn't about to spend $50 for an antique egg-gathering basket....unless I couldn't find anything else. Then I stumbled upon this cute little guy at Tai Pan Trading It was only $15, and I knew it was begging to be mine:

Isn't it cute?

Making the lamp was actually really easy, and only cost me about $40 altogether. From Lowe's I bought a swag lamp kit (which includes the cord, switch, and decorative chain), a socket kit, mounting bracket, and threaded pipe nipples (to attach the socket to the bracket....I'll show you).

First, I threaded the lamp cord through the chain, sliding it through every 2nd or 3rd link.

Next, I slid the "naked" end of the cord (the end with bare wires) through the bottom of my basket. I wired the mounting bracket to the bottom of the basket, and threaded the cord through that, as well.

I chose a short pipe nipple and screwed it into both the mounting bracket and the "cap" portion of the light socket, then I attached the wires to the terminal screws in the inner piece of the light socket (I stripped a little bit of the plastic coating from the wires, wrapped them around the terminal screws, then wound the screws tight to hold the wires securely in place). Then, being the resourceful gal I am, I used a tuna can to pound the outer covering of the light socket into the cap.

Next, I installed the switch in the lamp cord. An in-line switch is super-easy to install. You can find simple, step-by-step directions here. After I'd installed the switch, I plugged in the lamp to make sure it worked. It worked great, but then I realized I hadn't taken pictures of the inside of the switch (which I ultimately decided not to post anyway). I took the switch apart, snapped a couple of pictures, and then of course when I reassembled it, I couldn't get the dang lamp to turn on!

Bah.

The entire project had taken me less than an hour, but I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out why the lamp suddenly wasn't working. After a lot of troubleshooting, I finally figured it out, and hung up my new friend for all to see: