(Very) Amateur Electrician

Among the many hats I’ve topped off with has been a little title called “Electrician”, only recently though as I’ve taken to fixing/restoring a couple of lamps:

I found these two at a local Goodwill about a year ago for $6 each, just waiting for someone to come fix their sad state of paint peelage:

The only problem was that the paint was inside the glass bases and never have I ever messed with electrical stuff but where there’s a will there’s a way and I wanted two sleek, glass lamps so two sleek, glass lamps I was going to try to get.

So first I googled “How to fix a lamp” and came up with some helpful websites (of which I can’t remember to clue you in on in case you’re as crazy as me) and I came out with the basic gist of how a lamp was put together. So, with my limited, newly found knowledge, I got to work.

My initial strategy was to take a picture of every single piece as it came off showing where it went so that I’d have a detailed reference to look back when putting the lamp back together. The first lamp was a little bit of a learning experience and much more of a complicated process (due to my lack of know-how) than the second. Long story short, I mistakenly removed the electrical wire from the long, metal tube and it involved much frustration and eventually Anthony, lots of olive oil, a wire hanger, and a mess to get it back inside.

Once I got the glass base free, I scrubbed the paint out of the inside and referred back to my pictures to put the lamp back together (after the whole wire-in-the-tube-with-olive-oil-and-Anthony thing).

One lamp down, one to go.

I’m not sure if it was the frustration with the first lamp, pregnancy, or just getting plain side-tracked, but several months and a set of twins later, I finally got to the second lamp. This time Smarty put on her pants and kept the wire and tubing intact. Also to make things easier I nixed the camera idea and laid out each piece in consecutive order as I removed it: