Emma-Jane Harbour

Bistro Lights DIY

What you’ll need

  • Illumination Cable (expect to pay about R12 per metre)
  • Quick Fit Lamp Holders for Illumination cable (about R15-R25 each)
  • Golf Ball Globes (R15 each)
  • Plug point (or wire it into a light switch).
  • Pliers, Screw driver and Insulation tape.
  • Drill, §§§§§Fisher plugs / Screw Eyes may be needed for more permanent installations.
Let’s go!

Step 1:

Plan out your layout, you may want to string them between walls, or fit the globes onto the walls (Most lamp holders have 2 screw holes to allow you to easily fix them directly to a wall / roof / rafter). You could also try making up patterns or words / letters in lights by experimenting with different patterns. We opted for 3 lines of about 5 globes each strung up over our garden. Each globe is about 1m apart.

Step 2: String up the cable. Depending on what you are planning to do, this may require some drilling, nailing or tying up. Make sure the cable is not too tight, and secure enough to take its own weight (plus a little more). You could also choose to secure the lamp holders later instead of the cable if they are going up against a wall or truss. Try not to twist the cable too much.

Step 3: Fit the lamp holders. These are quite nifty. They have 2 small, pointy conductors that pierce into the cable once the lamp holder is tightened. Its quite important to make sure that you have the cable flat and flush with the lamp holder back when tightening it. The holder is designed to push the cable onto the sharp conductors evenly, lining them up perfectly to allow current to flow. The pointy conductors are offset from the centre, so one pierces into the red core and the other pierces into the black core. Tighten these nice and tight.

Step 3: Insulate the far cable end.

Using insulation tape, tape up the red core. Then tape up the black core. Then tape them together. The 2 cores should never touch; if they do, you’re gonna make smoke. You could also use an insulation block or something similar.

Step 4: Wire up the circuit.

You could just use a plug (bottom 2 terminals get wired in, the top “earth” terminal gets left empty) or get an electrician to wire it into a switch. This costs a bit of bucks, but if it ends up being a permanent fixture like ours, then it could be worth doing!

Step 5: Turn on the lights and throw a party!

If your cable got a bit twisted, you may have lights pointing in all sorts of directions. Try rotate them around and make them all point in the direction that you want.

Depending on where you purchase your supplies from, and the quantity that you purchase, you may be able to get it for cheaper than the above prices. We used Lido Electrical in Strijdom Park. They’re friendly, helpful and do give discounts when you’re nice to them.

Good luck and if you try it out send me some pictures!

  • Love
  • Save
    Add a blog to Bloglovin’
    Enter the full blog address (e.g. https://www.fashionsquad.com)
    We're working on your request. This will take just a minute...