My sconces makeover took much longer than I expected.  The actual transformation of the sconces was relatively quick and easy.  This is the before look, which I showed previously.

I bought the sconces for $2.99 each at the Salvation Army.  I gave them a few thin coats of spraypaint, and they were ready to be hung.  I ran into issues with finding the right candles though.  The distance from the candle holder base to the ring was 6″, which I thought would work with most standard pillar candles, but unfortunately most 6″ pillar candles are really only 5.5″, so it ended up looking really strange.  I did find some nice candles in my searches, but I was not about to pay $27 for a candle to put in a sconce I paid $3.  Finally, I found success at Wal-Mart.  They had 8″ pillar candles for $6 each.  I bought 2 and was finally ready to share my sconces.

The only problem was that the overall look  just seemed weird.  We had the picture hanging on the wall for a long time and it always looked very sparse in its surroundings. I should have taken an true before picture to show how lonely it looked.  Its a very long wall in our basement and the couch doesn’t sit directly against the wall, it is probably about 10-12 feet away from it, so the long wall really needed help.  The sconces did help, but then I decided to try what had once been our foyer table under the picture.  This was all part of the rearranging that occured with my free corner shelf and the sconces.  The previous foyer table had just been living under another picture in the basement near the bar/dining area of the space.  So, I stole that table and its accessories and lived with it under the picture for a while and decided it could stay.  Here’s the current look.

And,  here is another view so that you can see the perspective of sofa in front of it.

It is also really difficult to take nice pictures in a basement!  These are about as accurate as I can get the colors without much natural light.  So, what started out as quick little project, ended up creating a lot of rearranging in our basement.  But, the good thing is I think it created some improvements.  The lamp on the table under the pictures creates really nice light as we are relaxing on the sofa watching TV or reading.  I have more areas of the basement to show in some upcoming posts.  There were many projects that happened along the way as we furnished the basement.  Plus, I’ll share the true before and after of the basement with the concrete walls and floors, to the warm cozy family area we have now.

Anyone else work on a quick, easy project that ended up snowballing into many other projects?