My last project for the guest bedroom was painting some lamps. The ones that I had in there were small and skinny, so I knew that I wanted two matching lamps that were bigger than what I had. I didn't want to spend a bunch on them, though.
Luckily, I found some lamps that matched at Goodwill for only $10 a piece. They didn't have any lamp shades on them, but I figured that I'd probably want to replace the shades that came on them anyway, so that was fine with me.
They really weren't much to look at the way they were, but if I've learned anything from the blogs I read, it's that if you find two matching lamps that work, buy them! So I did!
After committing to buy them and starting to walk from the back of the store to the front where the checkout was, I had three different people tell me that I had found some beautiful lamps! After the third person said that, I started to feel kind of guilty for wanting to paint them ... but that only lasted a second or two... I found them first :)
I decided to paint them with a navy blue, glossy spray paint, and after I realized that I could separate the bases from the body of the lamps, I decided that I would paint the bases a brushed nickle color.
I started by taping off the part of the cord that was showing and the part where the light bulb goes in with a grocery sack and blue painters tape. I then primed the lamp and base with a gray primer. I figured this would help the glossy paint stick to the glass on the body of the lamp better.
I think I did two or three coats of the primer and then, after letting it dry for a while, I painted the base with the brushed nickel color a few times. When I was sure that was dry, I covered the bases with a plastic sack and started painting the body of the lamps. It needed a few coats, and it was during this process that I really messed up.
I did one or two coats on a Saturday night and then, after church on Sunday, I decided that I would do one final coat and be done with it. Turns out that it was a super windy day and it was a bad idea to leave lamps with wet paint out in the driveway! They ended up with flecks of dirt and gray paint flakes that had come off my tarps in the wind... Major fail!
So, the next night, I had to sand them down and try it again! This resulted in some far from perfect lamps (as it goes with many of my projects) but I just tried to turn them so the imperfect parts were facing the wall in the bedroom. Problem solved :)
I had found some lamp shades at Target that I thought worked well, so that's what I used to finish them up.
Here's what they look like now!
Other Guest Bedroom Projects:
