thanks for joining me I am so excited to
share this project with you I've been
working on it for a long time and I love
the way it turned out I think you're
gonna like it too for this project
our partners Leviton issued a challenge
to me they said build the ultimate porch
light and at first I was like hmm
unfortunate two porch light right then I
stood there and I look down the street I
looked at my house my unique and
interesting and cool house and I have
this boring porch light and that just
wasn't gonna do so what does the
ultimate porch light look like well in
my opinion it would have to be handmade
I don't have to be a work of art it
would have to be something that the
neighbors would look at as they walk by
and think wow that's pretty or something
that I would be excited to see as I pull
into the driveway on top of that it
needs to be smart and that's where the
Levitan comes in they've equipped me
with some of their Decorah digital
Bluetooth enabled dimmers and switches
and that's gonna allow me to do a few
things I'm gonna be able to turn the
light on and off from outside which is
awesome and then when I travel I'll be
able to set timers on it's turn on and
off at different times to make it seem
like somebody's home also awesome now
the artistic part that's up to me I had
this idea to make this artistic piece of
the Sun setting through the woods and I
thought that Voronoi structures would be
the perfect way to start
so in fusion 360 I got the free plugin
to make these structures and I started
creating a shape and then deleting some
of these loops so that some of it will
still be solid when I extrude it you'll
see what I mean here in a moment
after I extruded this shape I ended up
with the overall structure that I would
use I had to create a couple of these
and make a few modifications to it for
the final piece so I captured this and I
brought it into Photoshop to start
deciding on glass colors I knew that the
shape the frame itself would be wood and
the rest would be glass now I haven't
had an art class since I was about 13 or
14 so I was a little bit nervous about
how I'd be able to pull this off but by
sampling some colors and what I thought
was a pretty picture I think I did okay
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I wanted the Sun coming through kind of
right here in the middle with a mixture
of the sky leaves and grass towards the
bottom and top
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I was pretty pleased with how it was
looking so far here's some reclaimed
wood that I've been holding on to for
this project these cracks really
shouldn't affect how this project comes
together I threw it on my CNC router and
started to face it you can see here my
end mill is longer than my dust shoe so
it made an incredible mess note that
it's kind of slightly crooked here on my
table and that ended up being something
I had to repair much later in the
process
it's kind of fun to see how those little
bits of wood move around on the board
due to vibration I don't know about you
guys but I really find something
therapeutic about vacuuming up all these
huge piles of sawdust cutting the shapes
into the board required a little bit of
trial and error I ended up using a
pocket to grind away all the wood when I
was doing outlines just cutting out
lines I had a hard time getting it to
work right without sticking a screw
through every individual piece so
pockets worked great after that there
was lots of sanding involved you can see
here there's these little kind of furry
edges from the end mill that the sanding
smoothes out and takes away remember
I've done all this twice
the end result is this two pieces that
are nearly identical one piece has these
pockets on the inside that will be used
to hold the glass I wanted to put the
stain on ahead of time that way I wasn't
getting it all over the glass and having
to clean it off
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here's an array of stained glass both
old and new that I'd collected for this
project so I looked at this picture on
my phone and compared it to the
different colors to decide what went
with their here's the process you trace
out the shape on the glass and then you
cut your glass with with a glass cutter
this one was kind of dull you can see
I'm struggling with it a bit here I use
a sharper one for most of the rest of
the pieces after you score your glass it
breaks easily right along the score
another score another break and so on
until you have pretty much the shape
that you want
some grinding helps get it into the
perfect shape and it just drops in place
you do this over and over and over until
the whole thing's done you can see here
that the glass cutting part is a very
time-consuming and manual process Here I
am tracing out a bunch of pieces to get
the optimal amount of glass used for the
cuts I cut a bunch shape them and place
them where I need them
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after all the pieces are cut they're
kind of dirty they have pin marks on
them so I have to clean them up you'll
notice that they wiggle around a bit in
their holes so I used a hot glue gun and
a few strategic globs to hold them in
place so they wouldn't rattle whenever I
move the art or move around and reveal
too much sunlight
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I was careful not to add too much hot
glue because remember I've got to glue
these two pieces together and they need
to fit snugly a thin layer of glue over
the entire back of course careful not to
get it on the glass is what's going to
hold this together I clamped it as best
I could really I could have used an
additional two or four or six or eight
clamps you can never have too many
clamps but after a day of drying it
turned out really well I was super
excited at this point
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unfortunately my initial cuts with it
being slightly off-center meant that I
had a small repair I needed to do to one
side
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it's visible right there on top so I cut
a thin slice if that same reclaimed wood
and just glued it on to the side there
where I'd cut too shallow a hole more
sanding on the edges and an extra coat
of stain over the whole thing really
brings it together I love the way this
turned out it's absolutely gorgeous it
can stand on its own in your yard as a
piece of art but this is for a porch
light so it's time to get started with
the rest
I took an LED fixture and disassembled
it so that I could get the light bars
out of it and mount on this piece of
plywood as a base for the porch light
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I mounted them in a way to try to get as
wide of a dispersion of the light as
possible then it was time to actually
wire in my switches my breakers were not
labeled so I took this opportunity to
turn every single one off and figure out
what it was turning on and off around my
house
once I had the power off time to dig
into that light switch the lighting and
wiring in my house is a bit of a
nightmare so I'm not going to get into
the exact wiring here
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luckily Levitan includes fantastic
directions with their switches just
follow the directions and you'll make it
through
after the switches were installed
testing and working I put the faceplate
on
I like this snap-on method so you can't
see screws on the outside and if they
thought I had by leaving these little
gaps so that I could go in and adjust
the distance out from the wall to be
just right I love the way it looks it's
nice and clean
connecting with the app is super simple
and you could turn the light on and off
you can see the little status lights
there moving up and down it's kind of
neat
I really like this advanced setting here
if you go into the advanced settings you
can change how quickly the light fades
on or fades off if you've got a dimmable
light watch those little status lights
you can see them drop at the speed that
I just selected and then whenever I
travel out of town scheduling an event
is super easy so for example Here I am
loading up and selecting Monday I want
it to go to 99 or well actually 80%
power at sunset and it's saved the end
that easy
testing it outside you can see it works
just fine from a decent distance away
off and on works great my only complaint
at this point is that I bought the wrong
LEDs to fully take advantage of the
fading the ballast on my LEDs doesn't
really handle it very well but the end
result is gorgeous in my opinion I love
the way this turned out the glow at
night is just beautiful
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thanks so much for watching this I hope
you learned something about the process
or how you can make your own stuff even
if you don't have an artistic background
I also want to say a special thank you
to Levitan if it weren't for your
technology and your partnership I
wouldn't have been able to build this
awesome porch light be sure to give a
big thumbs up and subscribe to this
channel for more cool projects
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you