A lamp makeover to light up the nursery

Yesterday, I posted about the first step in putting together a room for our baby - finding a cot in a traditional Jenny Lind style. Today I want to share with you a lamp makeover I did soon after. At the time, we'd started painting the room too but I was excited to move ahead with some fun decorative elements. After all, we had spent many hours cleaning out the room and the huge built in cupboards that take up an entire wall. The prep work is never fun! It meant many trips to the op shop to donate unwanted clothes, linen and other odds and ends we had crammed in there. The upshot of this is that one day I decided to wander around the op shop and stumbled across a lamp base that I thought had great potential. I'd just read Good Bones, Great Pieces (a book I'd recommend by Suzanne and Lauren McGrath) which perhaps inspired me to see beyond its current state. At $5.99 for a tagged and tested lamp, I could hardly go wrong. 

After wiping it over, masking the cords and the bit where the bulb sits, I set up my painting station in our front yard and gave it a coat of primer, followed by two coats of white. As I was doing this after work, I waited a day between each coat. You could do another coat 1-2 hours later but it got too dark for me to do that.

To do the red coats, I needed to spray without any breeze so I relocated to my brother's shed and enlisted his help as I didn't want to inhale too many fumes with a baby on board. You may now be wondering why I did coats of white when I wanted a red lamp. I did this simply because I wanted a bright red which I thought would be easier to achieve with a white base. In the past, I've found that the red appears dull when painted straight over the grey primer. In the end, we did so many coats of red that it may not have made a difference. I think we ended up with 3-4 light coats of red before we were happy with the colour and the coverage. So many coats is probably not something the experts would recommend but I figure you gotta do what you need to sometimes. 

Next step was a lampshade. As it didn't come with a shade, I used several shapes of shades I have at home to get an idea of what would look best. A barrel shade looked better than a drum shade so I picked up this one at Freedom. 

I tried it on in the shed before the final coats were finished on the base and my little brother instantly said it was too big and looked all wrong. I didn't want to believe him. After all, what does a 23 year old shed-loving male know about lamps? Turns out, quite a lot because it looked so much better with a smaller Ikea JARA shade ($29.99), with less variance in the diametre of the top and bottom on the shade. 

The final touch was a piece of yellow bias binding around the base of the shade, although I'm yet to decide if this is permanent. It is secured with one small piece of double-sided fabric tape at the rear of the shade so could be very easily removed. I'm yet to decide if it's too bright a shade for the rug and armchair we'll be bringing into the room. More on those fun elements later. 

A chandelier reborn

The best thing about revamping old things is that it often doesn't matter if it doesn't work out. Unless you're dealing with serious antiques or things of sentimental value, the stakes are low and you're free to let loose and be creative. When it comes to transformations by paint, I'm yet to find myself wishing I didn't apply that fresh coat. It almost always looks better. 

This weekend while the Mister was putting render and final finish plaster on the fireplace, I got sidetracked from my next job of sanding all the wooden surfaces in our living room and reached for the spray paint. Oh, how I love spray paint. So fun to apply, so quick to transform something. I had my sights set on the chandelier in our living room. Eventually, I'd like to replace it but nice light fittings are never cheap and the good ones need to be installed by an electrician. That would cost even more money so I set about wondering how I could improve this old chandelier. The biggest barrier were the crystals. To paint over the brass fittings would require removing and then replacing each crystal. That sounded too long and arduous a task for my impatient self so I decided to try to cover them instead. Drips of paint all over them would look very amateur too so what to do? Masking tape all over them may have been hard to remove and could leave sticky bits which would have been a nightmare to clean when still attached to a light dangling from a 3.5 metre ceiling. Then I thought of plastic film/cling wrap. Genius I thought until I started questioning whether I could make it tight enough around the top of each crystal so no paint dribbled down. Mulling over this led me to my final solution which was aluminium foil! 

Wrapping all the crystal pieces of the chandelier was pretty painless. Just made sure I pressed them tightly around the top to stop any drips getting through. The final prep was masking the top of the light and sticking some newspaper up to protect the ceiling rose.

A coat of White Knight Super Primer and we were on the way. 

Then two coats of White Knight Quick Dry satin Enamel in black (this and the primer cost less than $10 each from Bunnings). I followed the instructions of the can and waited an hour between coats. I was pretty excited at this stage. High on life not on paint fumes, me hopes!

I managed to wait an hour before removing the aluminium foil, then I just had to see what it looked like! The photo above shows the bottom crystals half unwrapped. I took this to show the little strips of foil that I wrapped tightly around the top of each crystal before wrapping with a larger piece to cover the whole thing. I felt I had more control of this little piece and could make sure the top was tighly covered. It was mostly a success. 

Once all the foil was removed, there were only 3 or 4 dots of black paint on the crystals to remove with a little turps (mineral turpentine). At this point I realised that the white plastic things that sit under the light globes were a dirty cream colour so I threaded these on a piece of string, strung them up outside and sprayed them with a couple of coats of white paint (leftover from the lamps I painted here).

Another hour of waiting later and the makeover was complete. Old globes back in et voila! Some new globes are on the list of things to hunt down, maybe something a bit daintier. The current energy saving globes are not cutting it.You may notice that I didn't put quite enough newspaper up to protec the ceiling rose. Whoops. Lucky fresh paint is on the agenda.

So there you have it - how to revamp an old chandelier for less than $20 with minimum fuss, without an electrician or removing it from the ceiling!

Here it is from afar with a glimpse of the progress on the fireplace (final coat plaster now applied and tiles ripped up). 

With a new lease on life, this old beauty is now fit to remain in the revamped living room. The black gives it a bit of a pop and will help it tie in with all the other black elements in the room (the curtain trim, the lamp shades, the ottoman, the paintings etc). One final, before and after to showcase spray paint satisfaction...

I'm linking to:

Hall stand: before and after

 

Here's a closer look at the hall stand makeover as promised in yesterday's post on the painting of our entry hall. Yes, it's Dulux Domino again! I have not tired of this colour. It can look black, charcoal and navy depending on the light and I'm happy with all shades.  I also like it against the new Taubmans Mink Scorpio walls.

After sanding, applying 3 coats of paint and spraying with a lacquer, I replaced the knob on the little drawer with a black and white striped one from Provincial Living, just as I had used on the lamp table in the living room. These pieces can both been seen from the entry so it ties the spaces together nicely.

The hall table is another eBay bargain that I picked up for about $40 when we moved in last year. It needed to be narrow to fit the small space, and while the rounded corners are a little daggy in a country furniture kinda way, they are ever so helpful in avoiding bruises from sharp edges when stumbling to the toilet in the middle of the night! You have to consider these things! The mirror is great for checking that you are properly clothed as you dash out the door and the little drawer is handy for keys and little odds and end that otherwise get strewn near the front door. This leaves the surface clear for little cheerful displays to greet us and our guests as we enter. Here I've used a yellow orchid from The Flower Shed in the shade that makes my heart sing the most - yellow!

 

Linking to:

Mod Vintage Life

Crafty Confessions

Thrifty Decor Chick
A Beach Cottage

Black and white lamp makeover

Thrifty Decor Chick is hosting a cyber spray paint party today so what better time than the present to reveal my lamps properly. I have written about picking them up on eBay and the sheer joy of using spray paint, so I won't go over that again (but you can read it here). Here is a quick summary:

The lamps as they came (from eBay for $46).

 The lamps (and the little covers on the right dangling on nails) in the front yard after the first coat.

After taking out the wiring, cleaning and sanding (but before the third and final coat).

 Then I stared at photos like these for awhile. I'd taken them before dismantling but it was still difficult to get the wiring back in place. The Mister was eventually called upon...

 The lamps on the dining table after putting on the shades and getting the wiring back in place.

A peek at one lamp in it's new home with the wiring returned and an Ikea shade fitted (from the Bali Treasures post). More pics to come later of with both lamps in the shot.

I may still add white trim at a later date. Too many other home projects to conquer at present, so no time for these fine details, as much as these little things do make a difference.

A word to the wise, do heed Thrifty Decor Chick's advice because I did get some crackling in a little patch after the final coat. Now I know this is because it was too hot to paint when I did. After doing all the prep (cleaning and sanding) and waiting between coats, it was disappointing. Thankfully, I can turn that side of the lamp to the wall and the little boo-boo is forgotten. As for the two tiny drip marks, I'm just putting those down to character. Every home needs some!

As for my next spraying project, one of my younger brother's is very handy and I am hoping he will offer to help his darling sister (ppft!) spray something a little more substantial than the lamps with a proper spray gun and compressor. They are a pair of French bistro chairs (sometimes called Bryant Park chairs), a hand-me-down from my Grandad. Currently they are grey with wooden slats and I'm trying to decide if they should become all red, all yellow, all turquoise or all white. Something like these (below) for our front verandah! Such joyful scenes.

 

Image via Shannon Fricke's blog

Image via Lonny