Learn How To Revamp A Lamp Stand & Shade + Video
Have you got a sad old lamp shade or lamp stand hiding in the corner recesses of your home? Or you are about to haul one off to your local charity store because you think it is a lost cause? I will tell you now to stop, take a step back and have a look at it again in another light. Maybe it has some life let in it? Maybe it just needs a little TLC, a new do and a bit of paint and fabric to make it into something useful again. I have always loved giving new life to old furniture and I even more passionate about reusing what we have around our home to make it work for your current decor. Like fast cheap fashion, I think there is now a thing for fast furniture - cheaply made furniture that fits the current trend but isn't made to last beyond that. While I am not totally against purchasing these kind of pieces I would urge you to look at what you have and how you can make it work with what style you are going for in your home.
Like this sad old lamp stand above and the shade that I picked up for $5 from my local op shop. They both needed some love and I was about to do just that. There is a bit of a story that goes with the lampstand. My sister-in-law Hester & I intended to sand back the lampstand as a project for her and restain it. We did just that. We sanded it back to bare wood which took quite awhile because of the bevelling up the pole. We stained it and then added a clear coat on top. I left it in the spray booth a few days and I came back to retrieve it ready to deal with the shade and then I looked at the stain and the awful red stain that had been on there somehow had soaked through the new stain we had put on the stand. I really wasn't happy with how it was looking and neither was my sister-in-law so I actually had another lamp stand I found on the side of the road so we swapped and I gave her my roadside find to use for her project and I decided to redo this lampstand into something else.
I just realized I never took a photo of what it looked like after we had finished staining it. But as you can see in the pictures above we went to a bit of effort to strip back the stand to bare wood. If we knew the red stain would seep through to the new stain we probably would not have gone to all of that effort. Oh well, you live and learn. Anyway so after our staining mishaps I ended up lightly sanding the whole thing to rough up the surface and sprayed it with gloss black spray paint. I gave the stand two coats of the gloss black paint and let it dry.
While the stand dried in a safe place it was time to direct my energy to the lampshade. As I said above I picked this beauty up for $5 from my local op shop. It was in great condition and had the ability to be easily transformed into something special. Looking at it makes me wonder what possessed someone to add this trim to the shade. Thankfully it was not too hard to remove the trim off this shade and it didn't damage anything in the process.
I made a video tutorial on the whole process that I went through in transforming this lamp from drab to chic with all the instructions in there. Make sure you check it out to see the transformation. If you love the video or want to check out more DIY, Craft & Recipe Video make sure you pop over to The Whimsical Wife YouTube Channel and subscribe!
So as you can see below the shade scrubbed up pretty good. As much as I loved this lamp it didn't fit into the decor of my home. So I sold it on to someone who loved it as much as I did and that fit perfectly into their home. I hope this project has inspired you to look at your furniture in a different way and know that most things can be transformed into something new and beautiful.
If this project inspired you to makeover a piece of furniture make sure you tag me either on Facebook or Instagram with your project so that I can show it off to the world (with your permission). If you are in the middle of doing a project up and need some advice pop on over to my contact page and email me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
