Lamp Rewire and Makeover Complete!

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I’m finally finished painting and rewiring my thrift store lamp.  Now I’m addicted to lamps and have since rewired four additional lamps!   …so easy.

I picked my lamp up during a thrift store shopping spree I had a couple months ago.  Here’s the before picture:

I began ‘demolition’ by cutting the end of the cord.  This is optional, as you could just unscrew the two screws inside the light socket that hold the wires from the cord.  I opted for a completely new wire and lighting hardware because the current one was pretty old.  If needed you could also just buy the cord and use the existing lighting hardware.

At this point, this lamp pretty much came apart in pieces pretty quickly, as it was mostly held together by the tension of the light socket on the top.  My advice? do this over a soft surface if you’re working with any breakable materials.  I would also advise against doing this inside over carpet, as some old lamps may have tiny bits of broken glass inside them.

After cleaning up the wood pieces and conditioning them with tongue oil, I laid the metal pieces on paper in my garage.

Using white Rust-oleum Satin spray paint, I gave the metal a couple of coats on both sides, followed by a coat while sitting them on their top, and another coat while on their bottoms.

Follow paint instructions for correct outdoor temperature and wait time between coats.

After the white paint was completely dry with the final coat, using gloves and a rag I covered the metal pieces with Minwax ‘provencial’ wood stain.  After all the nooks and crannies were completely covered, I wiped it away using the clean part of the cloth.  The resulting finish was a darker color in the crevices, and an off white color on the raised areas.  After allowing the metal to dry, I gave it coat of spray polyurethane.

I decided to use white on my metal after finding my lampshade from Anthropologie

Next step? ….the fun part!  Assembly time!  I laid out all my pieces on my dining table, including a lamp kit from Home Depot.

Another piece of advice?  ….Take some before pictures to help with reassembly.  You may think you’ll remember where all the little piece goes, but a picture will really help.

So just to remind you what the lamp looked like before, here it is again:

And now:

I used to have a pretty simple lamp here before (also from a thrift store for five dollars):

I think the new lamp really livens up the space, don’t you?

Have you ever rewired an old lamp?This post is linked to the following party: