Salvation Makeover: Goodwill Lamp

Treasure hunting at Goodwill is one of my new favorite Saturday rituals. A few weeks ago, I found this lamp and shade combo that were functionally perfect, but kind of blah to look at.

I bought some gray spray paint and painted the base. Then my friend Heather helped me make a shade template and cut out a piece of fabric using that template. I don't have good photos for the process right now, but I plan to make another lampshade and I promise I will document the process better and post it on the blog.  I was a little nervous about getting the whole thing right and didn't think to take photos! Anyway, this is the semi-finished product:

Why only semi-finished, you ask? Well, I'll show you why:

Arghhhhh! I left too much fabric folded under and it showed through when the lamp was on. It bothered me to no end, but I had that feeling when you finish a first-time project that's taken a long time: I just want to be done with it! So I didn't do anything to fix it right away. But it bugged me so much that I never turned the lamp on; I just let it sit on the table like it was a knick-knack with no function. And I'm not too much of a knick-knack girl. So this morning I decided to make the fix. I ran hot glue around the very inside of the roll that goes along the inside of the shade, then secured the fabric to the glue. When it was stuck really well, I went along the entire shade and trimmed down all of the excess. The result?

SO MUCH BETTER! Now I can actually leave the lamp on. I thought this was a good example of a DIY project that turns out kind of disappointing at first, but is completely fixable. 

Approximate Project Cost

Lamp: $7 at Goodwill

Shade: $3 at Goodwill

Spray Paint: $4 at Home Depot

Fabric: $5.50 at Hobby Lobby (with 30% fabric sale that week)

Total: $19.50, plus the cost of other stuff I already had (hot glue, wrapping paper, etc.)

What do you think of the makeover? After is quite a bit prettier than Before, isn't it? ;-)