How to rewire a lamp

Sophomore year of college one of my besties, Meg and I moved into a tiny 1 bedroom apartment. We figured it was better to share a small space together rather than share space with 40 other girls in a dorm. The only problem was after signing the lease we realized that we owned absolutely nothing! Lucky for us Megs Grandmother owns an antique store (that lucky devil!). So Nina lovingly supplied us with some much needed basics. We filled in the rest via hand me downs from friends and family. I still own some of the pieces from our apartment, one in particular that I have been carrying around with me for 5 years and through 4 moves! This beloved green lamp...which has been broken since 2 months before our graduation from college!  So when we did our garage overhaul I decided it was time to fix because how could I throw out something this beautiful? I'm here to tell you I shouldn't have waited 5 years it was so easy and took all of 30 minutes!

These were the supplies I needed in order to restore my lamp to its previous glory. Total cost about 15-20 dollars at Lowes.  $8 of it being for the lamp shade. Inside the lamp package are very easy direction of how to rewire it. So I jumped in.

I first pulled up the top of my lamp and snipped the old cord. This allowed me to pull the cord slowly out the bottom of the lamp. I fed the new cord up the lamp and pulled out about 2 feet of extra length and slowly peeled it apart about 6 inches down.

With the new top in hand I folded the wires and tightened the little screws securely down on the wire. The directions tell you which side goes with which screw and its important to make sure your matching them up correctly or you may not have power when its all done. (Also make sure your lamp is not plugged in while doing any of this or you will get a very sharp shock! Trust me it hurts!)

  

Then you slip the cover right back over the wires to hide them and keep them safe. The bright gold of the new parts could be seen under the lamp shade and the new base did not fit 100% into the top of the lamp so I kept the old.

The old patina looks great and it fit perfectly with the new top. Now it was time to give the lamp shade a test and see if the bright gold would show through or not.

Perfect! Exactly the look I wanted.

 Moment of truth! Can I follow directions as well as I think I can?... YUP! Easy as pie and now my gorgeous lamp is back in business and our living room is no longer a cave (funny I didn't realize it was until I suddenly had more light lol).

 I couldn't be happier. And the best part is now I am ready to make other things into lamps to help light the rest of my house. As always I hope you are inspired. Thanks for stopping by.

Creatively Yours,

Christina Marie