Trashing – the act of picking junk out of people’s roadside trash late at night.
I’ll admit it. I liked it. I went for the first time Thursday night, and actually came home with something – a perfectly good, but outdated lampshade! It has a great shape – a drum shade, but tall. We made a trip to Ikea this weekend, and I came home with some gray printed fabric to re-do my shade.
It honestly wasn’t too difficult to recover – I simply hot-glued the new fabric around the top and bottom edges. The trickiest part was the edging. I made my own bias tape out of a left-over white sheet that had already been cut up. I hot glued it around the edges, and voila – a “brand new” lamp shade!
I then dismantled our old light fixture in the dining room, which we inherited with the house (i.e. FREE), and spray painted it. I put back together the pieces I wanted and added a ceiling medallion.
The entire project cost $27… $7 for a yard of fabric from Ikea, and $20 for a new ceiling medallion. I already had the spray paint!
Here’s the finished product – I am in love with it!
Click here to see the “before” of the dining room.
Great idea! Love it too! I need to re-do Lily’s lamp for her room and wanted to cover it in like a green gingham. But it’s a funny shape. What do u think? Would it be as easy to cover?
What kind of funny shape!? I’ve seen a few tutorials online for how to do it… there’s one here: http://sixinthesuburbsblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/esign-your-own-lamp-shade.html but what I did was a little simpler. Good luck if you do try!
It’s shape is like the pic on that post that has “modern” on it. I’m not sure what style it is really called but it looks like the head of a trumpet just upside down? Does that make sense? I would have to use lots of bias tape for each section. It’s not like urs that just has it on the top and bottom. Thanks for that tutorial I will have to give it a try….with a few more questions along the way;)
this is lovely, I write a lot of articles about repurposing and reclaiming! Nothing like making someone else trash into your own beautiful decor! cool!
This looks really pretty… actually I kinda really like the whole room! Nice work.
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Oh, it looks so great! I love the fabric – I haven’t seen that one before. May just have to head out to Ikea and pick some up myself.
Great trash hunting! I love the shape of the lampshade, I never would have thrown it out. The fabric you chose also compliments it well:) I would love if you could share your great trash;) find at my cheap finds and transformations party, even though your’s is better because it was free (but don’t tell anyone I said so lol)! I’ll include the link if you’re interested, have a fab week:) http://www.thescottscrib.com/2012/03/lathriftas-cheap-finds-and.html
Thanks for this! I have this old floor lamp with a lampshade just like that one (except 2-3 times bigger!) that could really use new life. I can totally do that! I love my hot glue gun! And I can paint the not-so-beautiful gold metal lamp base! Awesome!
It didn’t take me long to do at all, good luck with yours!!! :)