Lamp Revamp

In this post I mentioned that the hubs and I snagged a $3.00 lamp from the St. Peter’s Barn Yard Sale in hopes to revamp it for the new but completely empty office/2nd bedroom.  Although we only watched Mad Men for 1 1/2 seasons (we just couldn’t get into the hour-long episodes and eventually bailed), I feel that this lamp completely encompasses that era with its brassy gold metal finish, green light fixture, and pull cord switch.  I can totally see Peggy Olson pulling the cord switch on this lamp after a long day of working as Don Draper’s secretary in the advertising world.  Can’t you picture it right next to her typewriter?  Am I right or am I right?  I’m right.

As an additional bonus, and HUGE surprise to us, I actually Googled “pull cord switch” to make sure I was naming lamp parts correctly and long-and-behold our lamp popped up on the FIRST page of Google Images!  Ready for it to get even better?  It is still for sale on this website for about 50 EUROS which is about $60 American.  Yep, we got it for $3.  Yep, that’s a 95% discount.  Yep, this was our first time doing anything like this.  Yep, I’m totally bragging.  🙂

Anywho.  We decided the brassy gold metal finish just wasn’t our cup of tea so we bought silver metallic spray paint at Wal-Mart to make this steal of a lamp more our style.  First, we covered the green light fixture with newspaper and painter’s tape to protect it from the spray paint.

Second, we took it outside to our building’s fourth floor parking garage for better ventilation and spray painted three thin layers of spray paint while continuously moving the paint can and remembering to periodically shake it up.  Also, remember to spray paint from all angles: the back, front, bottom, and top to distribute the spray paint evenly all over.

                   

We allowed the lamp to dry over night and in the morning we had a perfect desk-sized, silver light emitting lamp!  Not to shabby for $3 and our first DIY project!

                        

Have you ever found an exciting steal to find out it was even a bigger steal?  What have you tried to makeover yourself?