Lamp Saga

Yes, this is a saga. A long, trying, lip-biting, I'm-so-mad-I-could-throw-it saga. It begins when I fall in love with a $1 lamp at a yard sale. It was oh so cute and reminded me of the Pixar lamp...the very filthy cousin to the Pixar lamp. This poor guy was beat up:

But it oozes potential. And I am always up for a cheap fixer-up so this $1 lamp came home with me. After scrubbing the dirt and who-knows-what off the lamp with a magic eraser, it was time for spray paint. I painted the lamp a rich plum color...and spiced it up by painting the inside of the lamp lime green.

This part was easy. They saga part began when I tried to put the lamp back together. The original cord, if you can call it a cord, was literally in pieces and a major safety concern. I thought I would take the easy route and use an extension cord as a new cord.

Nope, not going to work. The extension cord is too fat to fit through the bendy neck of the lamp. I found this out after cutting the end off the extension cord. Easy route = fail.

Next I tried the second easiest route - a lamp cord with the plug end already attached. Guess what? This didn't work either. After feeding the cord through the lamp from the bottom, I realized that the cord has to be fed from the top...which means that the plug end can't be attached to it. I would have to attach the plug after I got the cord through the lamp. Fail again.

By now, I am mad. More mad at myself for wasting time feeding cords through the lamp and not making progress. But I now know that I have to feed the cord from the top and attach the plug at the end. Seems easy enough. Until I get the entire thing wired up and ready to go and realize that I forgot to thread a tightening nut in the wiring process. And you know what happens when you forget that nut? You get a sad lamp.

And another fail! Really?! My love for this lamp was almost empty and I was about to throw it in the trash. But I decided to step away from the lamp and leave it alone. So it has now been about two months and the lamp is still laying in the corner of the guest bedroom in its sad state.

I have all of the stuff to fix the lamp, I have just ran out of "want to". Hopefully I will get motivated to finally fix the lamp and show it off. Until then, it will stay in the corner.