Show your love for beer like you mean it. How? By hanging it over your ceiling in the form of the Tejas Home Barlite, a series of decorative lighting systems made out of empty beer bottles.
Proprietor Trent Cody has spent the last ten years perfecting his craft, which entails building chandeliers, sconces and other illuminating fixtures from your discarded Coronas and Miller Lites. The result is a lovely-looking series of lighting artifacts of varying designs and configurations.
The Tejas Home Barlite consists of custom-fabricated pieces made out of stamped, shaped and welded steel parts, either in black or dark brown patina. All the bottles are removable, so you can easily slip in any brand of beer that you prefer. That way, you can use clear bottles for daily lighting, replace it with Green ones for Christmas or even dark ones for Halloween. It definitely sounds more fun than regular ornate lighting systems.
Easily the most striking of the current inventory is the “3 Tier”, a four-bulb bottle chandelier that lets you hang up to 41 bottles across three different heights. Other designs include the Bar Is Open Pancake Light (an elaborate piece with the state star and a state outline), the Texas Star (an outdoor-geared, 3-D steel design) and a 40-bottle Pool Table Light (single level, with magnets, so you can stick the caps in as well).
While designed for bars, these Barlites should look just as striking inside individual homes. Pricing varies between $500 to $900 for chandeliers and less than $200 for the smaller fixtures. They are sold without bottles, but you can request to have empty ones shipped along with your chandelier if you don’t feel like drinking that many beers (for an extra price).