Month of Makeovers Day 10: it’s our Thursday Hack Flashback!
Posted: October 11, 2013 Filed under: 31 Days, Decor, Hack Flashback, Memories | Tags: Brass, Flea market, lamp, lighthouse, makeover 2 CommentsWe’re ten days into our Month of Makeovers!
Janeray and I have decided we’re going to make our Thursday posts be quick little looks-back to where we got our vintage hacking genes. Let’s call it a Hack Flashback!
Today’s Hack Flashback is this amazing lamp my dad made. He loved making lamps and was always on the lookout for bases, lamp parts, and anything really—chunks of marble, brass doodads, glass bits, you name it.
See how he did it!
Dad found the heavy brass lamp base somewhere, the flea market probably, and decided it looked a lot like the body of a lighthouse. He formed the socket casing out of thick sheet copper, neatly riveted and soldered together. The “lens” is a jam jar that screws right down over the 7-watt bulb.
The “roof” is more sheet copper that fits snugly over the jam jar.
That switch is a lusciously hefty bit of brass, isn’t it? Do they even make things like that nowadays?
Of course it’s signed, like everything Dad made. His little wooden boxes of letter and number stamps were used a lot!
When he was all done with the lamp, he decided it really needed one more thing to look like a real lighthouse. A seagull.
Perfect!
See the entire list of projects for our Month of Makeovers HERE.
luray
janeray
dish sisters vintage home and housewares 
Very very cool! I may try that – what are the chances I’d electrocute myself, lol! And thanks for following!
You can get a lamp rewiring kit at the hardware store—easy but pricey. Or, if you’re frugal like me, you buy inexpensive electrical bits and check out a library book on DIY wiring. Lamp repair isn’t hard. Rewiring a house, that’s hard. 🙂