diy project

Dear Readers,

Whilst on mid-winter break (love that word, “whilst”), I averaged about one home project per day, and this one filled yesterday’s quota. I started a makeover project for our living room floor lamp.

Problems with living room floor lamp:

1. It’s really a lovely lamp that was handed down to us from my stepdad and his very tasteful wife (whom I shall call my bonus mom). However, it no longer matches our living room. We’ve been moving towards more white in the living room, and this lamp is still firmly in the category of “warm browns” that used to dominate the room.

2. The finial on the top of the lamp has come loose, and I think the screw has balded, so we just keep putting the finial back on and then it just keeps falling off. Usually it falls off when my hubby is around, and the falling-off bit seems to bother him a lot more than it bothers me. Making it unfortunate that it usually falls off when he’s around. (Okay, I’m trying to say in a nice way that he lacks the ability to remember that it falls off, and usually knocks it off with his big gorilla man-hands.)

Solutions to these problems:

1. The hubs and I are highly Goodwill-oriented. When a piece of furniture has problems, we’re pretty quick to chuck it. In fact, we have a little catchphrase: “Get rid of it!” Okay, as far as catch-phrases go, it’s not especially clever or catchy, but we like to shout it (loud enough to scare the cats) and put our index fingers up in the air like evil dictators declaring war on some pinky-sized country. So we had pretty much sentenced this lamp to Goodwill purgatory, until…

2. We told my stepdad and bonus mom about these problems, especially about my hubby’s intense hatred for the ever-falling finial, and they said, “Well, why don’t you just wedge a piece of paper inside the finial and paint the dang thing?” Ah! Well! [Slapping forehead with palm of hand.] Why don’t we indeed?

So I got started on the shade yesterday. This weekend I’ll prime and paint the base white.

Before, it was covered in a nubbly warm brown fabric, so I carefully peeled off the trim and the fabric. Then I removed the tape that was holding the plastic shade on the metal cage, and laid the plastic out flat. Then I covered it with music sheets (Bach!). Then I re-attached the plastic shell to the bottom and top metal cages with masking tape. I then used double-sided tape to stick on bias tape along the four corner edges to cover up where the music sheets stop. Finally, I re-used the original nubbly brown trim around the top and bottom. Voila!

I’m not sure what I think. It’s either cool or kind of…homemade-y. My husband said he liked it, but it was in that voice like, “Yeah, it’s alright.” When I asked him, “Do you really like it, or just like it?” he said, “I like it.”

On top of that, when I reassembled the whole thing, I put the top cage part (maybe it’s called a harp?) upside down, so now it’s sticking out above the lamp. This means I have to disassemble it again this weekend and fix it. Duuuuuuggggghhhhh! Oh well. These things happen when you start creating! Perfection is over-rated! And I have promised myself I will create without fear!

I’ll be sure to post the final makeover results after I work on it more this weekend.

Sincerely,