I Love Lamp!

The other day I was going up into our attic to store some boxes when I noticed something rather interesting...

What's that?

A huge cheetah print lampshade. As I climbed the ladder, I noticed that this lampshade was attached to a pretty nice looking brass lamp. Hooray a free lamp! I've been searching for a new lamp to put in our bedroom for a couple weeks and there it was above my head the entire time!

A lamp!

Covered in insulation :(

 The lamp was in pretty bad shape. The shade was destroyed, the lamp base wobbled, and I was not even sure it was going to work. So after tossing out the nasty cheetah print shade, I screwed in a light-bulb and crossed my fingers as I turned the switch. 

 

Hooray! A free lamp that actually works! So I got to work making it beautiful :) I peeled off the nasty brown felt on the bottom and carefully tightened the nut in the base of the lamp. (Make sure that the pieces of your lamp are in line while you do this; you don't want a crooked lamp).

Once I got my lamp tightened and aligned, I sanded it down with 220 grit sandpaper and then cleaned it really well. I started to sand and clean my lamp during William's morning nap, and quickly decided it was a bad idea because the sun was shining directly onto our back porch. Less than five minutes into working and I was already sweating :(

Later in the afternoon I went back out and finished sanding, and I cleaned all the dust off really well. Next comes the paint! Start by giving the lamp two good coats of primer (don't forget to tape off the areas you don't want to paint) and let dry overnight. I know it sucks having to wait, but it will be worth it in the end!

Two coats of primer

One Coat of primer

After the grueling overnight wait, you can now paint with your choice of color. I chose a subtle classic grey color for my lamp. I love the way it looks next to our new Minty Fresh bed-frame. Again give it two good coats and let it sit overnight again.

Well at this point in time, Jeff had come home for the weekend and he was really excited about my newest project until he noticed the wiring in the lamp was crappy. So being the electrical engineer that he is, he suggested that I replace it just to be safe. When I ran to Wal-Mart the next day I grabbed a lamp rewiring kit and got to work.

Lamp Kit, $6 at Wal-mart :)

All my hard work is in pieces!

It's starting to look like a lamp again!

After a speed bump of rewiring the lamp I was now ready to spray with the clear coat. I decided to go with Rust-Oleum Clear Specialty Lacquer because I wanted to have a super high luster coating. I like shiny things :)

I love how the lamp turned out! It took a bit longer to get it finished, but in the end it was totally worth it! I think that the grey looks amazing next to the mint green of the bed frame, and the crispness of the white drum shade makes me happy :)

Now I have to decide if Jeff gets to have this awesome lamp on his side of the bed, or if I am going to be greedy and put it on my side of the bed :) I think my next project is definitely going to be refinishing the end table the lamp is sitting on. It needs to be as pretty as everything else in the room.

When it's all said and done, I spent around $30 total getting this lamp looking fabulous.

I'm linking up to these fabulous blogs!