Sunday, February 3, 2008

January Jumpstart #2- The Infamous Lamps

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There's me, circa 1978 visiting my aunt. Note the excellent period details of paneling and cool Scan furniture. I love these lamps (without of course their weird pleated shades).

Here's a closeup of the stripe detail:
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Around 1986, my aunt moved into a new house and redecorated in a peach and grey scheme. She painted the lamps peach and painted the brown cords white. Fast foward to 1997- my aunt moved back to Ireland and left the lamps with my mom who promptly moved them into her bedroom. When we redid that room last fall, we bought new smaller bronze lamps and these were tucked in a corner to await possible reworking.
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I decided to tackle the lamps as a part of my January Jumpstart process because I really thought the blue stripes would work in my bedroom. Alas, when I started stripping the peach paint, it became clear that the blue stripes were also painted on, not some kind of fired-on glaze like I had hoped.
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The end result however was still wonderful. The shiny white glaze of the china was undamaged by the paint stripper, and lamps don't look anything like their 30+ years. I found the perfect taupe flocked lamp shades at Ikea, and was able to get the necessary sockets and silver wires to correctly rewire them at a local hardware store. All shiny and bright, they look lovely on my newly refurbished nightstands.

The final product:
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3 comments:

drwende said...

Aha! Yes, that's a very successful shade choice!

The emphasis on the simple form is so "now," and if the stripes were painted on once, they can always be painted on again if you miss them too much.

Mella DP said...

Those are fantastic. Never would have suspected anything so current lurking under there. And, since they have a demonstrated ability to take paint, you should be able to pretty much anything you like with them in the future.

Alana in Canada said...

ooh la la. Soooo sexy!