Office Lamps

A couple of years ago, I bought two lamps for my office from HomeGoods.  I liked the lamps and they served me well for nearly two years.  Recently, I noticed they were beginning to look a little sad.  By sad, I mean terrible.

 

The lamp bases are glass and it looks like the inside of the glass was painted with turquoise paint.  Cute, no?  Well, the air conditioning in the building where I work is turned off on the weekends.  This means my office can get a little warm.  The paint inside the lamps started peeling and falling off.

 

This is one lamp.  You can see where the paint was crackling and peeling.  This looked terrible.  On a side note, you can see the lamp matched the walls quite well.

 

 The lamps were really bothering me, so I searched online for some options.  The most appealing options were those lamps wrapped in jute twine.

 

 

I decided this was the way to go, so I bought a hot glue gun, glue sticks, and two rolls of twine from Amazon.  They arrived quickly but I was in no hurry to get started.  I'm not a crafty person, so this was a little outside of my skill set.  I did a little research online and decided the Memorial Day weekend would be when I tackled this project.  I went back to the office on Friday evening to retrieve the lamps.  I didn't want people to see me taking the lamps home on a Friday.  That's not usually a good thing.

I started by wiping down the glass to make sure there was no dust.

I then heated the glue gun and got started by wrapping the twine around the top of the lamp base.  This was a little tricky until I started wrapping down the side of the lamp.  Once I got started, it was pretty easy.  I would wrap a few times and then put a drop of glue to keep everything in place.

I continued with this for a while.  The thin part at the top of the base went quickly.  Once I got to the fatter part, it took longer.

I had to use more glue to ensure the twine didn't start "shimmying" up.  Once I got to the fattest part and then began going to a less fat area, things got a little harder.  I had to use even more glue and eventually had to turn the lamp on its side to keep everything straight and tight.

I finished about two hours after I started.  I think I would have liked having another roll of twine, but I decided I could accept it as-is.

Before and after:

I'm pleased with the final result.

Later that evening, I began working on the second lamp.  I used the same method for the second lamp.  For some reason, the fatter section was a little harder for this lamp.  I don't know if I didn't keep the twine tight enough or what the problem was, but the twine was sliding around a little.  I kept having to adjust the twine to keep it in place.

I was not sad to see the "chip" go.

I'm very pleased with the two lamps.

I know they'll look great on my desk!

I should also mention that I'm pretty sure I don't have fingerprints on my thumb and index finger on my left hand.  To ensure the twine was firmly in the glue, I used my fingers to press the twine into the glue.  I would occasionally have to peel the glue from my fingers: