How to Find and Make Your Own Vintage Shabby Chic Table Lamp

For those of us with older homes and tight budgets, vintage shabby chic decor is a great way to decorate on a budget. Shabby chic is a decorating style in which home furnishings are selected for their age and the level of wear and tear.

While it's easy to find vintage shabby chic tables and other vintage furnishings, tracking down a vintage shabby chic table lamp is quite a bit harder. Thrift stores throw out vintage lamps because of the older wiring and many antique stores won't carry old lamps because of the liability. If you are on the search for a vintage shabby chic table lamp for your home, estate sales and yard sales may be your best option. You can also make your own shabby chic lamp using one or more of the following ideas:

Hit thrift stores and yard stores for vintage lamp parts. I'm lucky to own a nice collection of vintage lamps from the 1920s to 1950s, and discovered that replacement shades and finials often turn up at thrift stores. While it's true that thrifts throw out old lamps with cloth wrapped cords, they will sell old shades and old lamp bases that have been rewired.

With a little bit of perseverance, you can make your own shabby chic lamps out of thrift store odds and ends. Lamp parts to look for include:
--Shades in a vintage style.
--Vintage finials ~ finials are the decorative knobs that hold the shade in place. These are never sold separately from the lamp, however it often is worth buying the whole lamp just to get the finial.
--Nicely styled bases that "look right" and can be antiqued or painted if necessary.

Have the lamp rewired. Before assembling your shabby chic lamp, it should be rewired first. Rewiring can be a DIY project using a rewiring kits or you can have the lamp rewired professionally at a lighting store. DIY kits run around $15-20; a professional may charge between $25-50 depending on the size of the lamp and the length of the cord.

Shabby up the base. Scuffing up the base can be as simple as dragging steel wool over the paint or distressing the wood in some method. (visit repairhome.com for easy instructions). Other ideas to try:
--Use a crackling compound on the lamp base
--Apply a faux antique finish using two different colors of paint
--Glue a pattern of funky jewelry directly to the lamp base, and then spray it in bronze
--Decoupage the base of the lamp using floral images cut from a magazine.

Shabby up the shade. Older lampshades used to have a lot more character than the ones you find now and often featured things like decorative edging ribbon, pompoms, or even beads. Some easy ways to shabby up your thrift store shade might include:
--Lightly spraying the shade exterior in gold or bronze spray paint.
--Attaching decorative trim to the outside of the shade near the base.
--Gluing fringed trim on the inside of the shade. (Check out mjtrim.com for some ideas of fringes that might work for this project).

Assemble the lamp. After all the components have been rewired, distressed and tricked out, all that remains is to assemble your shabby chic lamp. This is done by placing the shade on the lamp and then screwing on the finial to hold the shade in place.