And yes, I realize how curmudgeonly that sounds.
...grumble grumble, store bought lamps? Who are you, Rockefeller?...
The point is that when I find a pair of lamps, even if one of them is slightly wonky, I'm totally going to take them.
Such was the case with a pair of 6-foot tall lovely matte black torchiere lamps with frosted glass shades.
See?
With that description you'd take them too, especially since they still had working CLF bulbs.
The lamps had both been partially disassembled because the center post has 3 sections that can be unscrewed from on another. They looked like this when I found them.
One lamp was just fine, and needed reassembly but no fixing, it now stands near the entryway and looks rather normal. Maaaaybe it leans ever so slightly. Not a problem for me, because free.
The other lamp however, had a problem in its base. Under the metal base there was a large donut-shaped ballast (probably made of lead and cement dust). On the normal lamp it looks like this from the side, with the gray heavy ballast extending down past the metal top with a channel for the cord to go through.
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| Lamp base, side view |
From the bottom it should look like this, with an intact ballast.
Note than on the intact lamp the ballast sticks down far enough so that the nut (at the end of the red arrow in the picture) does NOT touch the floor, because to balance a lamp on the bend of a cord would be silly, and tippy, and useless.
Unfortunately, the wonky lamp had only half its ballast-donut when I found it, and after handling the ballast I realized what was left was beyond saving. Sadz. Also, major design flaw, the black metal base top does not extend down past the nut/hole/cord bend. So without balancing a lamp on the bend of a cord, and scratching the floor to hell, how to get some more light out of this lamp?
Answer: Make a different kind of ballast, for cheap.
I thought about trying to cast some cement.... No. Acrylic? No. All too messy and expensive. But eventually I hit upon a very economical solution.
Now the wonky lamp stands up all nice like this.Standing tall next to the couch with its freestyle cover, illuminating the very living room where I'm writing this post.
Curious how I did it? Let's zoom in to the base a little more.
You can see a blue blanket wrapped around something at the base of the lamp. Oooh, secrets, exciting!
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| Secret Yoda maybe? |
Peel back the blue blanket and we see that that something is a purple bucket with another blanket on it. Less exciting, but much more snuggly, than bricks.
Under that multi-colored blanket, inside the bucket, are some assorted heavy items to balance the lamp and fill up the bucket so that the lamp stands straight. This magical ballast is a few large bags of dried beans, assorted textbooks, and one copy of the new edition Joy of Cooking.
The lamp itself is sitting on some strategically placed magazines so that the nut/cord situation doesn't throw everything off. I don't have pictures of those, because by the time I got around to writing this I didn't feel like disturbing the bean/book balancing act.
The only things I bought as part of this solution were the purple bucket (reusable in many ways) and the dried beans (edible!). So if I ever part ways with this particular freestyle project I won't be heartbroken about the sunk cost, all $9 of it. However, given that both lamps have been going strong for over 10 months I'd say this was a big win.
Happy freestyling and let your creative re-use light shine!