Video Transcription
Hey guys, it’s Travis at GasPumpHeaven.com. And today I’m going to show you a cool new product that we’re offering up here at Gas Pump Heaven. And it’s these old-fashioned sconces. Now these sconces you used to see back in the day, they would be on either side of the service bays as you would pull up to a gas station. And they would also be on the door as you would get ready to walk into the door. You’d see these old sconces holding their advertising globes. These globes, these sconces are solid metal. This is a one-piece cast. This is a two-piece cast. And these are replicas of the ones you used to see back in the day.
Now I’m going to put one of these up here in my garage. And as you know, these make such cool pieces for garage art. And garage art, it’s the latest thing. You know, you look in my garage here. I’ve got some traffic signs. I’ve got an old soda machine. I’ve got a couple of traffic lights. And so I was looking around trying to figure out where I was going to put this. And I thought, you know what? Let’s do a video. Let’s do something really cool, something really unique, and replace what I see as a little bit of an eyesore in every single garage. And it’s the old garage door button. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn my sconce and globe into a garage door button as well. And I’m going to show you how we do it.
Now the first thing you’re going to want to do is take the power off from your garage door unit. Now yours may be a breaker switch, but mine just simply plugs in. So all you have to do is unplug it. That way we can work with the button. And in case we accidentally press it, we don’t have to worry about the garage door going up and down.
Now you’re probably wondering, how in the world are we going to turn a sconce and a globe into a garage door button? Fair question. Well, I’m going to use this smaller profile sconce because I don’t want the big one to be protruding out over my workbench. So now this sconce has a one-inch indentation in the back of it. And my garage door button is only about three quarters of an inch deep. So essentially what I’m going to do is I’m going to cover this button up, and then I’m going to make my bottom bolt the button to press to open and shut my garage door.
So the first thing that you want to do now is you want to take this button off. Now my particular type, you don’t want to just shove a screwdriver in behind it and try and pry it off because you probably are going to bust it. My button, you have to take a flathead screwdriver on the top and push down, and then it kind of comes out like that. Then you want to take a Phillips head screwdriver and remove the screw on the top. Once that screw is out, now mine lifts up, and there’s another screw right behind it. That’s how you remove the button.
Now the next thing we’re going to want to do is figure out exactly where we’re going to want to mount our sconce, and we can mark it, outline it with a pencil, or just kind of put a dot where we’re going to put the screw holes. Now that I’ve determined where I’m going to have my sconce mounted, the next thing I’m going to do is start running the power to it so we can get it to light up. Now I have this switch here that I’ve used to run my traffic lights, and I’ve got an old gas station light. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to power it just right through this switch. So the first thing I’m going to do is take off this plate and get ready to run the wire.
Now you’re noticing it’s a lot darker in here than it was just a second ago, and the reason is I threw the breaker to turn the lights off. Anytime I’m working with power, I like to go to the main breaker, shut it off. It’s just not worth the risk. So now anytime you reach in here and you touch something with a screwdriver, you know you’re safe. That’s just the way I do it. If you’re not comfortable working with electricity or don’t know what you’re doing, I would advise you to call an electrician or you can talk to a friend. You have to know somebody that knows a little bit about electricity and can help you wire this thing up.
I want to get this button out of the way. It’s just kind of a pain in the butt where it sits, and there’s two wires that go to the back. And so what you want to do, just loosen those two wires and then slide your button off. Now it doesn’t matter which wire goes to where because you’re just completing a circuit. Now the one other thing I’d advise you to do is take a piece of tape and tape these wires tothe wall because you don’t want to lose them back behind this wall because then you’d have to open it up or try and fish them out and it’d be a nightmare. Now you’ll notice that I’m putting wire nuts on everything. Not only did I put one on the black one which is the one that’s hot, but I also put them on the ground and the white lead as well. And the reason is I wanted to turn the lights back on so we had a better shot so you guys can see what’s going on. And also the wire nuts are going to keep, in case everything slides back in, it’s going to keep it from sliding back into the wall. And I just didn’t want, if someone came in, if I walked away from the project and flipped the switch, nothing was going to happen.
The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to start working on figuring out exactly how we’re going to mount the button to make our sconce our new button. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to mount this upside down because the button is going to come in at the very bottom of the sconce in this hole for mounting. And so I have a lock and a power button on the bottom of mine. Now I never use it. The lock button, if I go on vacation, I just unplug the garage door opener. And the light, well it’s a garage, I have lights everywhere, so I don’t use either one. So I’m just going to not mess with them. I’m just going to leave them hidden behind the sconce. And the only thing I’m worried about is finding something to come in and to touch that big button on my garage door opener so that when I press the bottom bolt, it opens. So I’m going to start, like I said, by I’m going to put the wires back on this and then I’m going to find a place to mount it upside down.
Now the next thing I’m going to do is because I chose to go with a low profile sconce, this is a two-piece sconce. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to separate it to make it a little easier for me to work with just the base. So you need a Phillips head screwdriver and you just take these two screws off. Now before you complete your mounting on your button, you’re going to want to make sure that it’s level so everything looks absolutely perfect.
Okay, now that our garage door button is mounted, we’re going to make sure it’s good and snug, still level. And then the next thing we’re going to do is put our button back because we are done with this portion of the project. The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to put our sconce back together and we’re going to wire it up and then we’re going to mount it in place over top of our button. Now the one thing I forgot to tell you, before you put this thing back together, tuck everything up as it’s going to hopefully sit when you put this all back together. Before you put your sconce part back on this base plate, sit it over top first and make sure it’s going to fit. And second, you’re going to want to mark where you’re going to put this lag bolt because the sconce actually sits in the way of this lag bolt just on the low profile model.
Now I’m going to use a three inch lag bolt to mount the top part of the sconce. And for the bottom part of the sconce, I’m going to take a carriage bolt and I’m going to paint it black as well and I’m going to cut it off so it actually goes in and touches this big button and I’m going to glue it right onto that button after I get everything mounted. So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to drill a pilot hole for my top lag bolt. Now be real careful because there could be electrical wire as close as we’re dealing with this, there could be an electrical wire back there so you want to be very slow and cautious because you definitely don’t want to hit that.
Now I’ve got this old milk crate here and I’m going to just use it to sit my sconce on so I can do my wiring without having to balance everything. Now I got my pilot hole drilled and what I’m going to do, here’s my lag bolt that I painted and it’s dry, but what I’m going to do is I’ve got another lag bolt that’s the exact same size lag bolt and I’m going to run it in there so that way when I put the sconce up I don’t have to really crank and crank on my painted bolt.There’s already going to be a good screw hole for me to go into. Now that that’s done, I’m taking a look at my sconce and I notice that my lag bolt is not going to be able to fit in between. here. So what I’m going to have to do is I’m going to have to take it apart and just put it together in sections. So not a big deal, I’m going to need an extra milk crate here, something really high so I can just kind of lay everything in a nice easy spot to get to. I’m actually glad it’s worked out this way because this is going to be a lot easier for me to mount and then I can just put the sconce on last.
There’s a pocket in here that you can kind of feed your wires into, not to mention the fact you’ll be able to feed them down in between here. So this is going to make it a lot easier for me.
Okay, now that we’re all wired up, let’s go ahead. I’m going to twist these wires around at the top because I have a lot of space in the top here where it’s going to be able to accommodate these wire nuts. So I’m going to twist these around like that so they sit good and then I’m going to put my mounting bracket up and take a look at it. And it looks like it’s sitting exactly where I hoped it would. I’m going to line up my bolt. I’m going to take my lag bolt and go ahead and start screwing it in. Now I can put it in as tight as I want, then we’re going to feed our wires down through. Be real careful with this lag bolt with the paint on it because you don’t want to scuff it.
So now the next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to start fishing these wires up in here so we can mount our sconce back on the base plate. Now we want to make sure that everything is still sitting level so we can make any adjustments that we need to.
Okay, the last thing you’re going to want to do is figure out how big this carriage bolt is going to have to be. And what I did, I just took a pencil and I kind of whittled it down a little bit so it would fit in this hole. Now make sure that you push that button all the way in and then I’m going to take just a razor blade here and just set it flat and cut a little bit of a notch in the bottom of it so I know how far I have to be in.
Now remember, on a carriage bolt, I’m going to show you this here. Okay, on a carriage bolt you have this little neck and you want to make sure that you are clearing for that little bit of a neck. And on this sconce you also have this decorative part so you want to make sure that that neck is going to sit above this decorative part so it’s going to stick out a little bit so that you can actually have some playroom to make this button work.
I went ahead and I plugged in my garage door opener and the last thing for us to do is throw a light bulb in here. Now this is a 60 watt bulb. This is the absolute maximum you can put in these sconces. But if you don’t want it to be as bright, you can do all the way down to a 10, 20, or 25 watt bulb. It’s up to you.
Grab your advertising globe. Now we have over 150 different ad glasses in stock. They’re for sale on our website. They’re also in our catalog. And we also have a lot of different colors for the outside. And we also have plain metal so if you’re looking for a specific outside color, you can paint your own.
So now we just throw this right on top just like that. We tighten up these set screws. And then we can flip our switch and light it up. And of course mine now, as you saw in the video, is a garage door opener. Very cool.
I hope you guys enjoyed this project. And if you have any cool garage art that you’d like to share with us, no matter what it is, we would love to see it. We just love garage art. Jump on our Facebook. Upload the pictures there. I’m sure all the other Facebook fans would love to see it as well. You can also check us out on Pinterest and you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching guys.