Repurposed Vintage Plant Sconce

I found these vintage plant sconces from the 1970’s at the thrift store for about $3 (for both) and just knew that they would look great in my modern glam living room.

After some cleaning, primer, and a coat of gloss black spray paint they looked like new.

At first I really didn’t know how I would use them. I guess these were really common in the 70’s as sconces for fake plants & flowers–eww.

It dawned on me a few days ago that I still had a sheet of plastic from the fluorescent light fixture that removed and that I could use that to turn these sconces into a shelf.

I used a large envelope to trace out a template–a file folder would work well too.

After cutting out the template (I called it my taco shell) I placed the plastic into the center of the template. I did it this way because it makes manipulating and cuing the plastic a lot easier.

Using my favorite glue in the whole world–E 600 glue–I simply glued the plastic onto the lip of the sconce.

Because I wanted to use the sconce as a shelf to hold a statuette, It need to be securely mounted to the wall. I would have used anchors and dry wall screws, but the heads of the screws would not fit into the mounting holes on the sconce.

I found two wood screws that fit into the sconce, but were too short to offer any support into the dry wall.

Enter the DIy mounting bracket.

I used an old scrap piece of wood to create two mounting brackets. I lined the top edge of the sconce with the edge of the wood, marked the length, and drilled holes where the screws should nestle into the holes of the sconce.

Using my handy dandy lightweight-yet-powerful cordless Ryobi 5″ circular saw, I cut the wood to the correct (measured twice) length.

I mounted the brackets to the wall with anchors and drywall screws. Use a level while mounting the bracket to ensure that your shelf or sconce is level after mounting.

I then inserted the wood screws into the pre-drilled holes. Make sure that the wood is painted the same color as the sconce.