Transcripts
1. Introduction: I'm going to show you that
you do not need to spend a lot of money to create
stunning decor for your home, and just because something is broken does not mean you
need to throw it away. My name is Bronwyn Tarboton, I'm a Broadway performer and content creator with a
passion for home decor. When the pandemic hit, like many of us, I found myself with a lot
of extra time on my hands. I started transforming
whatever furniture I could get my hands on and sharing
my projects online. Now, my social handle, nyctrashtotreasures
has over 40,000 followers and has been
featured in print and TV. I love showing people just
how easy it is to make something really cool from
something totally undesirable. In this class, I'm
going to show you how to rewire a lamp that's not working and completely make over both the base and create your own bamboo-style
lamp shade. Anyone at any level
can join this class without previous DIY or
electrical knowledge. You should take this class
if you want to learn to fix a broken vintage
lamp that you love. Or if you want to upcycle
a cheap thrift store one into something chic
for your bedside table. Let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Getting Started: [MUSIC] I'm so excited you're
here and ready to demystify lamp wiring so that you don't have
to throw yours away. In this class, I'll teach
you how to rewire a lamp, transform the base, and create your own bamboo style lampshade. The results will be a
trendy and updated lamp for your home that no one will
believe you made yourself. Plus, once you have learned
the basics of wiring, you can use the same
skills to create pendant lamps and wire
most kinds of lighting. Lamps are one of the
most common things I find both on the curb
and at thrift stores, but they often don't work
or have outdated wiring, which can be a good
idea to update anyway. If the lamp is working, then usually the shade is
dented, stained, or missing. I'm also going to show
you how to create your own lampshade as well
as make over the base. For this class, I recommend starting with a
small table lamp. The technique will work
for any size and I've seen people make huge
overhead pendant lampshades, but that will take a lot longer and require more supplies. To keep it easy, I
suggest starting small. I'm working on a
table lamp I got for $10 on Facebook Marketplace. Here's what else you'll need. To rewire the lamp, you'll need a screwdriver
and wiring kit. To create your own lampshade, you'll need an existing
lampshade or lamp rings, craft dowels, raffia string, a glue gun, and
optional woodstain. You're all set. Let's
create some space, layout our tools, and get going with the first stage, rewiring. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
3. Rewiring Your Lamp: In this class, we're going to completely make over this lamp. But first, I want to show
you how to rewire it. Since this lamp is broken,
so we're fixing it. Some pieces might be
in bad condition, some pieces might be
in good condition. So you can assess
that if you want to, but the easiest thing to
do is just to start fresh. That's what I'm going to do. We're going to
unscrew it, [NOISE] and then we would
just want to get everything out all
these old wires. [NOISE] Then all the wiring is gone and the old
sockets are gone, and you're left with
just your lamp vessel. That'll be the same
process on this one, even though it looks a little
different like this one, the wires are connected, so we just want to
get everything out. Same thing. This screws on. So we would just remove that
so that we can start fresh. I'm going to focus
on this one since that's what we're
actually rewiring. Now, everything is unscrewed, we have it all gone,
and we're just starting fresh with
the lamp base. This lamp has a screw right there that holds
it all in place. The next two things
that you're going to need are your wire. It has the plug already on it, it has a switch, and the wires
are like this, ready to go. Then my hardware store, I got a full socket. It came just like this. This [NOISE] has the screw
that holds the shade on, and then it hasn't
both of your parts. [NOISE] The holder, the
top, and the inside. So you can get
everything that you need in just two parts, the plug and the
wire and the socket. The next thing that you
need to make sure is that on one of them you
have a switch. So switches can come either on the top socket or on the wire. It totally doesn't matter, the process is exactly the same. You just need to
make sure that you have a switch somewhere. I have my switch on the
bottom and my socket. So the next step, I'm going to take this [NOISE]
apart and take it out. So I have this
little wiring piece. Then I'm going to take my wire and thread
it through the lamp. This one's pretty easy because
it has this big open base. Some of the vintage ones can get a little
bit more tricky. [NOISE] Take your wire and we're going to just
stick it up through. I'm just twisting
these so that I can get it easily
through that hole. We got it through
and we pull it up. There's our switch and
our wires ready to go. So next, we're going to
put it through the base. This is the stuff
I always forget. So before you wire it, keep going and put it
all the way through the socket base.
We've got it through. Then this will twist
right on here. This is a standard screw
almost all lamps have this exact same size and
you just screw it right on. I'm just reaching
down here so that I can [NOISE] twist it on. So it's on and we
have our wires. Now it's time to do the
actual wiring part, which you are
[LAUGHTER] going to not believe that this
is all there is to it. So we take our wires, I'm
going to split mine a little bit more just so I
have some room to work with. One thing to keep in mind, there's two types of plugs: a polarized plug and
a non-polarized plug. This plug is polarized, so it has one big
and one small plug. This plug is non-polarized so they both look the same. You don't really need
to worry about this. All you need to know, if
you're plug is non-polarized, it does not matter where your wires go. They
can go anywhere. So if that's the case, you don't even need
to pay attention to where exactly
I'm putting these, you can just go for it
and you can't mess it up. This is a polarized plug. That just means that
we need to make sure we put our wires
in certain places. My kid came with a little card or I just look
this up online to remind me that I need to put the
wire with the ribbings. If you look at your wire, you can see this side has ribbings and this
side is smooth. I have my little diagram here, so all I need to remember is
that ribbed goes to silver. Now we're going
to tie this knot. You have both of your wires, you're going to open
it up side-to-side, and then one wire will go under, one will cross over
like a little pretzel. Great. You've tied your knot. Then we're going to
just sit that right there and now it's time to
do our actual wiring part. You'll take your screwdriver and open these screws
up a little bit. So I'm just unscrewing
the silver and the gold. Sometimes it's easier just
to do with your hands. We have them just loosened,
we're leaving them on. We're just giving
ourselves some room. Then we're going to
do the actual wiring. We're reminding ourselves,
ribbed goes to silver. So you'll take your wire, wrap it clockwise
around the screw. So I'm wrapping it around. Once it's folded over, I'll just tighten that screw. Then we're going to do the exact same thing to the other side. So you'll take your
wire, wrap it clockwise. You just want to wrap it in
the same way that the screws going so that when you
tighten the screw, it doesn't loosen it. You just want to make
sure everything is nice and neat and you don't have like wire spraying anywhere. It's nice and neat.
It's tucked in. You have ribbed to silver and then we're just going to tuck
it back into the socket. So sometimes I might have
left too much wire there, it might not fit back
in. There we go. Great. Now your lamp is wired, we're just going to
screw it back together and test it just to make sure. Let's put the
plastic covering on. Here we go. Put it back on. This is just the
socket has a screw. So before we go any further, let's just test our
light bulb and make sure that we did it. Moment of truth. Yay, it works. That's how you rewire our lamp. If you test it and
it doesn't work, you'll just want to unplug
it and just check back in to see if your wires
have gotten loose. Join me in the next
lesson where we will be creating a new lampshade. [MUSIC]
4. Creating Your Custom Shade: In this lesson, we're
going to create our own bamboo style lamp shade. We're going to use
this ugly blue shade, which was the
original shade from the lamp to create
our own lamp shade. It's going to look
completely different I want start cutting the fabric. I'm going to rip the fabric off, so that I'm left
with just the metal ring You see, now they're separate. You can do this on
any style or shape. It doesn't matter as long as you have two rings which you will. Let's rip it apart. Pretty interesting. You can see how lamp
shades are made, is just two rings and some fabric. You're left
with just the rings. I like to spray
paint my rings so that they're the color
that I want for my lamp. I'm going to be painting
this lamp white. I'm going to spray paint this white to match and
just blend in. For the purposes of this demo, I'm just going to keep going. The next step, we need to stack our rings so that they're the height that
we want them to be. This is the part that's
just a little bit annoying. We just have to hunt the home to find some things to stack so
that it's the right height. Trying to create a stack
so that it will hold the rings in place while I
start to glue the dowels on. Once you've glued on a bunch, then it will hold itself up. But right now where
it has no fabric, we just need something to
set the rings on top of. The reason I'm not
just sitting it on the table is because
I want the rod to be able to be a little bit below and a
little bit above the ring. The size of your stack
is going to depend on the size of lamp shade that you're making and the dowels that you have. I order them in the
exact size that I want. For this size of lamp, it'll take about 60 dowels. You'll want to order a bunch, so you have a little bit extra. When you order your dowels, they'll come just like this. You can do it just like this. I think it makes it look a lot more expensive if
you stain them. I used a little
bit of wood stain, I brushed them on over the dowel and just
spread it around. Then after you stain them, they'll look a bit
more like this. Let's actually start
making the lamp shade. I have my stack which is
the height that I want. I like to just line it up. The easiest way that I
found for me is to put the hot glue right
on to the ring, on the top and the bottom. You can see that one. I did it a little bit
uneven. There we go. Then we're just going
to add some next to it. When you're putting
the dowels on, you want them to be
close enough together that it looks like a lamp shade, but there's another
room for you to tie a raffia string which
we're going to do after. I'm just gluing the dowels. We just got to get through
this annoying part. That one was not even at all, so I just slid it a little bit. I would not go any
further apart than this. You could definitely
go a little tighter. Once you set up your distance, you just want to keep
it about the same. I promise once you try
a couple of these, you'll start to get
the hang of it. Once you have some dowels on, we're just going to
turn it and do some on the other side so that it
will stand up on its own. Let's just double-check
again because this is where it really matters
that it's on the center, otherwise your lamp shade
will be wonky tire. We're starting on
the other side. I have three on. I'm going to hope it's going to stand up on its own
and play Jenga. We're going to take off the
top book or Tupperware lid. I've used a cereal box,
whatever you have. So far so good. I'm going to go back
to where we started and keep filling in my dowels. Once you've done that, it's going to look like this. This is one that I made
using the exact same dowels, the exact same blue lamp shade. I got these in a pair. As you can see with this one, I really took my time with it. I put them a lot
closer together. I made sure they were lined up. But made it using the
exact same process. Spray painted the ring
white before I started. Now I'm going to show
you how to finish off your lamp shade by tying
the raffia string around. As you can see,
I've already done it on the bottom and
some on the top here. I'm going to show you
exactly how to start it and finish it so that you can wrap
yours all the way around. I usually do the raffia tying
part on the actual lamp. Here's our other base
which I painted. This is the exact same lamp, and it is just painted using the basic ceramic
effect in white. You can learn all about that in my ceramic effect class and it totally changes
the look of the lamp. Let's put our shade
on to our lamp. When starting your
raffia string, you want to take your roll
and you want to start with actually quite a bit of string because the
longer your string is, then the last time you'll
have to finish the end. If you start with
a lot of string, you might actually make
it all the way around. You're going to stick the first part of
your string through the back and then pull
it all the way through. This gets easier as you go because your
string gets shorter. Pull all the way
through, leave a tail so that we can
finish off the end, just like an inch or two for the tail when you
want to tuck it down in-between your rods. I like to wrap up
accordingly so you pull it through the front and then wrap it and then go to the back and then come
back through the next gap. I'm going to take this end and just tie it down with a
bit of hot glue in the back. Then I'll trim that end. Then we'll keep wrapping our other so that we can
blend them together. You can do an extra if you
want to be safe for this. You know what? I will do
an extra just to be safe. That way I don't have two
ends right in the same spot. I'm right there, I'm going
to do a spot of hot glue. I think we got it. Your bulb in. We are totally done with our full lamp makeover. Can you remember the blue
Smurfs lamps situation? This is the exact same lamp, but it's been
completely transformed. I hope you've gotten some ideas. You can paint your base, you can make your
own lamp shade, and you can rewire a lamp that's not even working in just
a couple of minutes. I hope you've had
fun and try some of these ideas out on your own.
5. Final Thoughts: Thank you for
joining this class. I hope it's given
you the confidence to rewire any broken lamp, or grab a free curbside or thrift store piece
to experiment on. Now that you've
completed this project, feel free to get
creative and experiment with these ideas
on a larger scale, and in your own way. Remember to share your work
in the project gallery. I can't wait to see
what you get up to. Thank you so much for joining.