Making It Mine - Vintage Floral Lamp

Making It Mine is about buying a new or vintage item and changing it up to make it mine.

This was my latest project - a lamp base from an antique store.  The sign said "it works" which was good to know, since it was missing some parts.  Just to be sure, I had them try it out with a light bulb before I bought it.

As you can tell, the main thing missing is a lamp shade.

Another thing missing was the knob to turn it on and off.  Luckily it was in the "on" position when they put the bulb in.  Who wants to turn a lamp on and off with needlenose pliers?  Not me.

When I took the lamp to the hardware store to see if they sold knobs that would fit, they told me there was a piece missing from the center, too.  You're not supposed to have just that piece of cardboard.

The hardware store man found a lamp kit, opened it, added the gold center part and put on the knob.  How easy was that?  

I still needed a shade, though.  As you can tell from this picture, it probably originally had a glass globe for a shade, sort of like what goes on a hurricane lamp.

The store didn't have the right globular shape that I needed.  I didn't like the skinny clear ones they had, either.  I liked the looks of this pendant shade, though, so that's what I bought.

 

Here's what it looks like now.  The shade is not the right proportion, but the color is nice.  And that circular band looks a little odd, but so what.  It's definitely not as matchy matchy as it would have been with the original shade.

When I turned the knob, I got a nice surprise: there's a bulb in the base.  So with one click, the base turns on, with two clicks it turns off and the top bulb turns on, and with three clicks you get both.  I like the lamp even more now.