I had a few companies provide quotes, however to the tune of $7,000 I couldn't quite take the plunge. $7,000 for a few pieces of cedar lumbar...I don't think so. I knew my family would be willing to help me build this for a fraction of the price. So that is on hold until next summer.
During my searching for backyard ideas, I found this...
I figured I could easily do something like this on our fence. I found packs of solar lights at Lowes for a decent price. I went with 2 packs of 8 for a total of 16 lights. The lights I found didn't have a base so I thought there had to be a better way. I needed a semi-circle type of clamp that I could fasten to the front of the board. I found some 3/4 inch copper pipe clamps in the plumbing section that worked perfectly.
To assemble my lights, I started by cutting a 2x4 into 16 chucks about 2 inches wide. I also found some stain spray paint. I was excited about that since I am always worried I am going to burn my house down with a spontaneous combusting stain rag.
The stain said it would dry in 15 minutes. LIES! Look at how wet the blocks were after 4 hours. So I let them dry overnight. There were still a bit tacky, but not bad. I don't have a lot of patience to wait so I used them tacky.
The blocks were easy to assemble. I used L brackets to attach them to the fence post and loosely fastened the pipe clamps to the blocks. I was fine with the silver brackets and copper clamps. You can't really see the silver once they are installed and I realty like the pop of color the copper gives the lights.
I screwed the L bracket to the fence first and then slide the light down into the clamp and tightened the screws. I didn't want the light to stick over the top of the fence like the sample I found, so I moved them down.
We have lots of big Maple trees in our backyard, so I had to be strategic of where I placed them so they would get the most sunlight. I tried to capture some pictures of what they looked like at night, but that was a bit of a challenge.
Here are some pics during the day. I know, I know they are hard to see.
I love how they turned out. The lights give our backyard such a sophisticated feel and they really do give a good amount of light. AND even better, I think I spent a total of $95 on this project.
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