Pallet Lamp

**This post was originally posted in October at Confessions of a Northern Belle

Today I wanted to share a project that has been long in the making.
Ever since I moved out to the boondocks of South Carolina I have had loads of free time which means basically everything I own is getting a makeover sooner or later. It also means that I've been able to find lots of cool things to repurpose around our house/land. One thing I didn't notice in our last house was our lack of lamps. I had 1 table lamp, 1 desk lamp, and 1 hanging lamp. Totally not enough lamps right! So the first projects on my todo list have been to find unique lamps for our boondocks house.  Lamps are so hard to come by, well not hard to find but hard to find at a price I was willing to pay. [I'm super frugal, it's hard for me to purchase anything specially if I think I could possibly make it on my own]. It took me forever but I finally just broke down and said I would make my own lamps. The first one I made was out of an old gas can that we found in the yard shortly after moving in. You can see the tutorial for that one here.

Now I'm going to share with you the other lamp design I came up with a while ago and am JUST now getting around to making. [I know slacker, I've had time I just get too anxious sometimes].

This particular lamp is made from an old pallet that I've been robbing wood from for other projects. I've used it to attempt to make a dog bed, that didn't work so I took it apart and made some artwork for our bathroom. Now I've got a few other projects in place but right now lets talk about my pallet lamp base.

First things first is you have to take the pallet apart. If you read the post about that failed dog bed you found out how much I hate taking apart pallets. So I just cut it, no hitting, hammering or prying needed :) I cut the boards as close to the supports as I could so that I had some length to work with later, but I didn't worry too much about it because I knew I didn't want the lamp to be to large.

Then I took the pieces in to the studio and used my handy dandy new miter saw to make some simple 45 degree angle cuts. Originally I was going to just build a box with out the angles and just glue and screw the boards together. But once I was blessed with this saw I figured this would be a great project to use it on. And when you use angle cuts it automatically makes the "box" shape more sturdy with out adding in supports in the corners.

After making sure all the cuts fit together I simple put two screws in each corner to hold it all together. I was very surprised with how simple this part was. I thought for sure I was going to split the wood because I couldn't hold it in place or something. But luckily it balanced well and allowed me to simple finish my task :) I love it when things go so smoothly!

Once the box frame was finished all I had to do was add the lamp kit! I got the kit from Lowes, it works great but let me warn you the directions are no fun! If you read the post about the gas can lamp, I give a step by step tutorial on how to put the kit together. And even after putting together multiple kits and even writing my own tutorial it still took me multiple tries to get it just right! Lamp kits are tricky but they sure do allow you to do a lot with your decorative lighting!

While I was at Lowes getting the lamp kit I checked their lamp shade section and they had this barrel shade on clearance for $7! I snatched it up and placed it on the lamp just to see how it fits. Now it doesn't really go with the other fabrics in the room so I decided to cover it with something different. But it stayed like this for a little while... Oops!

And see that side table the lamp is sitting on? I was super productive the day I made the lamp and also redid both of our side tables! This particular side table is 2 side tables cut down, repainted, and stacked to make one that fit the hight of our bed :) You can check that out here if you wanna see that transformation.

Ta-Da!! This entire lamp cost me less than $20 and no more than an hour to make! I was so surprised and super happy with how smooth this project went, if I had realized how easy it would be I would have done it months ago! But lucky for you I'm an over thinker and procrastinator so I waited until now and got to share with all y'all! 

I just wanted to thank Catalyn for letting me guest post at her precious blog! I've really enjoyed getting to know Catalyn and see her little belly grow! And I hope that you guys will come visit my blog and catch up on some other projects down the road. DIY is a constant around our house and right now I am setting up my craft room and my studio out side so there is so much to look at! Again, thank you Catalyn for giving me this chance and sharing your gorgeous readers with me :)