I’ve been a bit lazy around the house lately, but I have a few little things up my sleeve.   You’ll notice that I haven’t spent a lot of time setting up the kitchen yet, which is going to change soon.  The office has been getting gussied, mostly through the installation of my big pipe shelving unit, which has made so much of a difference – it made the room seem twice as big and bright, which is a good start.

One of the biggest issues with the office is the lack of light.  There is a small window off to one side that faces the side of the house next door – the sun never gets to it, making the room constantly frigging dark, which makes me want to scream.  I can’t standing living in a dark house.  I painted the room white to help brighten it up, but I’m trying to play with the artificial light.  It’s hard.

So, when I was at Anthropologie, I saw this huge industrial floor lamp that I fell in love with.  Of course, it was an antique from France or some shit, and was $5800.00.  Yeah. 

Then, while wasting time in Homesense, I found this floor-mounted spring lamp on supersale.  Why was it on supersale?  Because the shade was missing, the base wasn’t screwing in properly, and it needed to be re-wired.

I bought it, with absolutely no real understanding on how I was going to fix it up, but confident that I would figure it out.  As you know, I am obsessive and if I want something done, I do that shit.

Task #1: Find a new shade

I wanted a big industrial shade like the one I saw at Anthropologie.  It had to have an easy way of attaching to the light, and it had to be super-light so that the spring arm wouldn’t droop down with the weight of it.

Hellooooooo Ikea.

I just bought this $13.00 bad boy, and threw away everything but the shade.   Then I found a socket that would hold it properly.

2. Re-wire that shizz

Ok, there were two problems here: first, I don’t know anything about re-wiring lamps, and second, I needed to completely change the socket to make that Foto shade fit on the base.

Turns out it is SO EASY to rewire a lamp socket.  I was convinced that I was either going to kill myself, or completely destroy my $33.00 lamp. 

Seriously.  You just re-strip the wires.  Wrap the stripped cords on the correct screws in the socket.  Tighten the screws.

Look how beautifully I stripped these.  Such a good stripper.

I MADE LIGHT!

Put that bad boy back together, and I love it.  A great addition to my “70′s music corner vignette”.

PLUS – he looks a little like this.  Which is awesome.