Maker spree (a dog halter and a bedroom reading light)

I've been nurturing the "Rubbish Rescue Artist" portion of my psyche lately.   I came off a spate of making birthday cards for the year (ingredients: cards my dad had received from charities, manilla file folders with the tabs too worn for anyone to want them, brass-colored buttony things), and somehow just kept going.

I'm tickled with how well these next two projects came out: I've been putting both the new dog halter and the reading light to use, and they're working great (which is not always a given with improvised projects, so yay!).  Details below.

Dog Halter

I hadn't intended to make a dog walking halter, but I keep seeing these around and thought I might appreciate using one for Prewash.  I was on the verge of heading out to buy one and realized Wait: I have a drawer full of straps; I could probably make one!  And sure enough, with a bit of inspection of photographs on the internet, it seemed like a pretty straightforward design.  This project probably took all of 15 or 20 minutes.  There's $25 I won't spend at the store, right there.  

Ingredients:

• four straps (one for under the dog, one for in front, and two for going over the top, where they'll snap together)
• two rings, one for each shoulder of the dog (I used key rings)
• a D-ring to attach the leash
• a fastener to snap the dog in,
• thread for sewing the straps to the (key) rings
• a dog

The ones in the stores have more hardware, to make the harness even more adjustable, but I could just measure the straps for the dog I happened to already have handily available.  

And the dog, she seems to like this. She doesn't paw at it like she does with the gentle-lead that goes over her nose, and she's very happy to go for walks wearing this and then to pant in the warm weather when the walk is done.

Bedroom reading light

This project is one I've been plotting for a while, and the only reason it's taken me so long is that I just needed to opportunistically find the right materials.  A few years back, we had our favorite house carpenters work on the main light in our bedroom -- the old owners had installed a very small light screwed directly into the plaster (no ceiling box!!!), and we wanted something more substantial so we could replace that wussy little light with a combination light and ceiling fan.  We definitely did NOT want to screw that into the plaster and then have it crash down on our heads in the middle of the night! 

While our carpenters were mucking about in the ceiling anyway, we had them add an outlet on the ceiling near the far wall, with switch near the door, so we could add reading lights, style to be determined.  And then several years passed, while I hunted for suitable lights and suitable ways of mounting them to the ceiling or wall, depending.

Our new reading lights on the far wall.
You can see the cords from our ceiling fan/light dangling down.  
I love our ceiling fan!

A few weekends ago, I popped into our nearby Habitat Restore shop, and they were having a moving sale (they're moving closer to us: I'm quite excited about that!).  I found a fixture I thought I might be able to make use of, plus some sconces to go with it, all for the price of $4.19.   I scooped them up!

The fixture was designed to screw into a wall box, which we don't have (and I was pretty sure I didn't want something permanently fixed in the wall), so I decided to attach it to some block of wood that I could mount on the wall . . . and while searching for a beautiful slab of wood, I ran across this weird thing that was a cross between a crate and a tray, almost palette-like in its construction. It seemed perfect! I painted that the same color as the wall on the opposite side of the room.

Ingredients

• Preowned light fixture and sconces from Habitat Restore ($4.19)
• Crate/tray, trash picked
• Leftover paint, to make the crate/tray match the opposite wall
• Machine screws and nuts to attach the fixture to the crate/tray ($2 ish, from the hardware store)
• Cord clipped off a trash-picked appliance that no longer works
• electrician's tape, for connecting the cord to the fixture
• Light bulbs
• L-brackets and masonry screws for attaching the crate to the (plaster and brick) wall

I like how this came out a lot -- it's quirky, which matches me, for one thing.  It's a really nice amount of light just where we need it, for another.  And if I ever decide it needs to go somewhere else (or become a completely different fixture) I'll only have to plaster over two small holes in the well.  

It's a double pleasure to make things that are so useful -- the actual making is fun, and then when I strap the dog into the harness or switch on the lights, I get a little ping of "I made this" pride.    Makes me want to spend even more time with my toolbox, I tell you.