Chandelier Makeover

John and I are currently working on revamping our informal living room. We had a pretty cool ceiling fan in there, but it just wasn't our style. A picture of it is below

A while back I had found an old brass chandelier at Habitat for Humanity for $20.

I grabbed it, but wasn't quite sure what I'd use it for. Then I started researching spray painting chandeliers and found tons of posts on how to do it and many of them came out great. I decided to give it a try too and if it came out well we could use it in the informal living room.

So I went to Lowes and grabbed Rustoleam's Gray primer spray paint and a shiny silver top coat spray paint. I just needed one can of each. Then John hung the chandelier from a tree in our backyard so I could easily paint all sides. Then he blew off some dust with the air compressor (this is not necessary). 

After John was done "dusting", I wiped the whole thing down with a wet rag to remove leftover dust. Once it was dry, I started spray painting the primer on the chandelier in 2 very light coats. The trick is to keep moving the spray paint. John thought the light bulbs were no good, since it is so old so I left them in there while painting to keep paint from getting in there. I also decided to paint the candle holders the same color as the rest of the chandelier since they were brown and stained. This is what it looked like after two coats.

Now I was ready for the top coat. I starting spray painting again in the same manner- many light coats. After 3 coats or so we had this!

I was super excited because it looked like it has always been silver.
Then John hung it in our informal living room and we found some small lamp shades at Lowe's for it. This is a picture of it hanging in the living room! We love it!

 (Note I did not sand the chandelier or use finish remover, which made the chandelier very hard to handle, if you choose to do the same be very careful reinstalling it)
Also, that red thing on the shade is the plastic wrap, I was so excited I took the picture before unwrapping all of the shades.