I Love A Challenge

I JUST realized that I haven't blogged about my goodwill lamp spruce-session! How I managed to forget that, I have no idea, but it's never too late, right?!

Right!

So here she is.

And she had a sister, too. Momma Bear and I found these little soon-to-be-beauties at goodwill and I was SO stinking excited. I had been scouring (scowering?) the local stores for some cheapo neglected twins to call my own. To put my stamp on. To call my own and make beautiful again.

And behold, there she was! Her, her sister, and all of their ugly pre-Princess Diaries-esque makeover glory. They SO went home with me!!

The plan was to make them pretty, rewire the electric, and then recover some old dingy lamp shades to finish out the project. Then wah-lah. They would be mine! Muuahaha ha haa!

Okay. Sorry. I got caught up in the memory.

You see, I have a bit of a problem. I see too much potential in the household items at goodwill. It gets to the point where I'm put in some form of a goodwill time out, now and then. Just ask my momma - she will vouge for me. But with Studly out of town for the week (thank you Air Force!), it was the perfect time to take advantage of goodwill time with Momma and score something amazing, all in time to surprise him with something he thought I bought. Booyah!


So I took it a step at a time. Now, I don't have step-by-step pictures (becuase I'm a bad blogger. *smacks hand*), but here's the low-down:

Step #1: Removed old wiring. This is when I remembered to take the before picture shown above.

Step #2: Clean the lamps. I used my Shaklee all-purpose cleaning mixture and it worked fabulously. (love this stuff!)

Step #3: Spray-paint lamps in a beautiful stainless steel color.

Step #4: Clean off bad spray-paint, and try again... this time in a timeless Satin White.
Now, I'm all about full disclosure. So let me just say that the stainless look spray paint did NOT turn out correctly. I mean, it wasn't even paint. It looked like a steel-wool scrubber and killed it, then sprinkled the remains all over the lamp. I don't know how it happened, and I don't have a picture (dang it!), but it was nooot cool. I know that I followed the directions - I shook it 50-million times before spraying, and blah. The good thing, I guess, was that since it was so piecey, it wiped off and re-cleaned in no time. So the next coat of paint went on seamlessly. Looking at it now, you'd never know there was a problem. Heck - you'd never know they ever used to be a different color to begin with!

And that, my friends, is what I call... SUCCESS!


Now back to the process...

Step #5: Re-wire the lamps, using an easy-peasy lamp wiring kit (I bought mine at Lowes, since McStudly's Dad is a Disctrict Manager up in the Mid-North area... I guess you could say we're a little partial). It comes with everything you need, and has super easy instructions to follow. Anyone can do it!

Step #6: The shades.

Again, I'm all about full-disclosure, so I should tell you now that I ran out of time. I was working on these lamps while also cleaning the entire house and tryign to get things re-organized before McStudly got home. I started the lamp project Sunday afternoon, and his plane was due to land at around midnight that night.

I'm a sucker for a deadline. What can I say?!

Anywho - I say all of that to say this: I didn't do some crafty DIY lamp recoverring. Instead, I ran out to Lowes (again... we're partial, and the size lampshades that I needed were cheaper there than at our Walmart or Target) and grabbed some super cute this-will-work-for-now shades instead. Oh well. A girl's gotta cut corners SOMEwhere. Do ya blame me?!

So finally I arrived at... *drumroll please*

Step #7: My favorite of them all. This is the step where you plug everything in and admire your finished work in it's final home.


Aren't you eager to see what these ugly ducklings turned into? Well, just to remind you, here's the sure-leaves-a-lot-to-be-desired before shot, one more time:

And now, without further adeue, I give you - the finished product:

And here they are, in their new homes:

They sure did come a long way from their brassy befores, didn't they? Well, we love them, and use them EVERY night before bedtime... and our toes are ever so grateful to be spared.

Mission accomplished.