Mister and I celebrated our 25th Anniversary this year! In 1996 we spent our honeymoon on Nantucket and it was perfect. There is a beautiful little lighthouse on the island called Brant Point. It is iconic, quintessential New England. But lighthouses, while romantic and beautiful to look at on a beautiful summer day, are vitally important in the storm to mariners who are in dangerous, uncertain waters.
Totally unrelated (but bear with me), few years ago I had mister change out the light on our front porch for something more beachy looking. That old fixture became my inspiration piece. The metal was rusty and yucky but I tucked it away because it was telling me to! (Mister had wanted to throw it away!)
With a lot of time on our hands and not much to do during the pandemic we decided to build our own lighthouse as a homage to that memory.
Planning it out took some conversation. We considered doing it out of wood. The cost of wood is prohibitive, the angles to be cut were mind boggling, and rotting would be a factor considering it was to sit in the garden. So, concrete seemed a reasonable option.
Using an inverted tomato cage as our shape was part of our plan but that was going to be a LOT of concrete. We purchased a sonotube from Home Depot. Sonotubes are thick cardboard tubes that you fill with concrete to form columns or footings to build upon. We placed it in the center of the tomato cage and filled the space between the cage and the sonotube with concrete- leaving the center hollow. I TOOK NO PICTURES OF THIS! I get caught up in the project-sorry.
This project took about 10 bags of quick setting concrete. We mixed one bag at a time and packed it into place. Use thick gloves or this stuff will destroy your manicure! Because this is quick setting product time is important. You cannot stop, take a call, or go to pick up the kids in between.
Once everything was packed well another bag was mixed a little soup-ier (loose). Mister used this as a smoothing coat over everything.
The metal prongs that would normally be pushed into the ground on the tomato cage were still sticking up past that first circular ring. He cut them off with wire snips. Level out the top where your base and light fixture will sit.
I attempted to make a concrete disk to sit on the top using a plant tray, the kind that catches water under a potted plant. Without rebar it broke apart.
Plan B. We purchased two round, wood disks at Home Depot, a can of black spray paint and solar lights (we bought 2; one for backup) used to light up walkways, doweling, small eye hooks and black chain all for less than $35, I think.
Mister glued and screwed the two wood discs together. He then drilled holes around the outer edge to accept doweling. I cut the dowels to length, glued and inserted them into the holes. After the glue dried, eye hooks were screwed into the tops of each dowel.
We had some pvc board and mister cut and mitered pieces into a hexagonal shape to elevate our light fixture as it just sat too low and looked wimpy. That was screwed into the round discs. We did cut a large hole through the center of the wood discs to allow water to pass.
Very little sanding happened (because that was my job)
A little deconstruction of the original light fixture, a little black spray paint and the insertion of our deconstructed solar light and we have a mighty fine (or at least functional) lighting mechanism.
Mister used silicon to attach the disc to the top of the concrete structure. Also, lesson learned during a storm, that a dab of silicon to secure the solar light was necessary. Good thing we bought 2!
On hot nights we sat on our porch watching the light from the summer sun retreat. Just as the last bit of sun goes out the lighthouse shines bright! 25 years of marriage... wow.
t
