A new lamp (ish).
The lamp that came with the house over our dining table has been falling apart. Literally. So we spent seventy-five bucks and a couple of days to fix it. We sort of ended up with a new lamp.
Of the thousands of photos I've taken in and around our house, I could only find one that showed the original CB2 lamp.
The thing was wrapped in paper that was yellowed and falling off the styrene, which had itself cracked in a bunch of places and was hanging down. We have no idea what the thing looked like when the previous owners picked it out. Maybe it was white? It's hard to accurately describe how crappy it looked. That one photo doesn't really do it justice.
Thankfully, the fixture had potential and the process of redoing a lamp shade is pretty straightforward. We started off by ordering a roll of styrene and picking up some white linen at Joann's. Then got to work.
Step 1: Take apart the beat up lamp shade and remove it from the fixture. Since none of the lamp wires were color-coded, I marked the hot and neutral with tape.
Step 2: Iron the linen.
Step 3: Cut the styrene using the existing lampshade as a template. This photo sort of shows how yellow and gross it looked. K had cut the holes to try different fabric samples. We ended up going with white linen. There was also a bottom piece we had to cut.
The weather that day was warm for February and gorgeous. The snow from our record snowfall last month has almost completely melted.
Step 4: Score (or crease) the styrene. This particular shade is rectangular so it needed to be scored. Of course, a round shade would not. We've found many uses for our little Scor-Pal.
Step 5: After rough-cutting the fabric to size, adhere it to the styrene by slowly removing the release liner from the adhesive backing. Then cut it to size. We left a 1/2" border which was just enough to wrap around the metal frame of the shade.
Step 6: Glue the fabric to the frame. We used good ol' fashioned Tacky Glue. I remember my mom having this stuff. That's how good it is and how long it's been around. The other reason? It works awesome. It was tacky enough to hold the fabric tight while it dried, then was hard and secure. We figured out clever ways to hold everything together while the glue dried nonetheless.
Everything was coming together nicely. By this point, we were onto day two. The weather had changed.
We also had coffee. Of course.
Along with a helper. Of course.
Step 7: While all that glue was drying, we wanted to spruce up the fixture a little. Slowly, we're updating all the (dated, in our opinion) brushed stainless fixtures (door knobs, faucets, curtain rods… lamps) to matte black. We keep a stockpile of flat black spray paint in the garage. I also had some white left over from our Sprinter van build. So I went to town masking and taping everything I didn't want to paint.
We painted the exposed part of the fixture that attached to the ceiling flat black and the pieces inside the shade white. At that point, it began to look like a new fixture much more our style. We do very much appreciate the contemporary look, after all.
Step 8: Attach the other frame. Most shades probably have a top and bottom frame. This required some more creativity to build a stand for the frame to sit on and dry. It's what scrap wood is made for.
I also taped the seam on the one end to hold it while the Tacky Glue dried. We could tell the lamp was coming out nicely and were excited to get it rehung. Also, we were looking forward to getting our dining table back.
In that middle photo again it's evident the difference between the shoddy yellow paper and the crisp new white linen. To complete the (re)installation, I swapped out the light switch for a dimmer and popped in some brighter light bulbs. Options.
Boom.
That's more like it. Also, more us. K and I were really satisfied with how it turned out and remarked to each other how it's basically like we have a new light fixture. Hence, the 'ish.' All for the cost of a couple afternoons of work and about $75 in supplies. Another craft checked off our list.
