I bought a light that is supposed to hang from the ceiling. I don't have an outlet/receptacle where I need this to go and want to adapt it to hang with a plug in at the wall.
The way it comes out of the box, there is a ground wire that is supposed to be anchored at the top to the brace. I'm guessing that since I will be running it off AC I can eliminate the ground wire. The outlet is grounded. Am I correct? Or, am I in for a zap?
I consider my knowledge, skills and experience to be at their lowest with anything electrical. And, if I hadn't thought of asking as this site, I would have just given it a shot.
It looks to me like some wire fishing is needed, along with an electrical junction box to be mounted to the ceiling joist. That means, a hole will need to be cut into your ceiling drywall (but not so big as the light's base plate won't cover up the opening) - only big enough to expose the junction box.
Typically, in a situation like this, you'll have to run wire (as WS indicated) from a nearby switch up in between your wall, up into your attic and then over to the junction box. This is known as "fishing" since you can't see the wire that you're running.
Then, the "fished" wire is hard-wire connected to the light's wires - black is positive/hot; white is neutral; and ground is either a bare wire or green. The same color wires are connected using wire nuts and then carefully packed inside the junction box. Then your light's base plate mounts to the junction box. If the base plate stays mounted to the rest of the light, then the entire light is mounted to the junction box.
If this "fishing" stuff sounds like a PITA, it is. A licensed, bonded electrician can do this fairly easily as he's going to have the experience and probably an extra tool or two in his toolbox that helps with this.
Alternatively, the wire can be run on the wall and ceiling surface inside a conduit that is more decorative than a galvanized steel tube, but that still looks crappy.