From seriously scary to seriously sexy
I was very fortunate to inherit a gorgeous teak buffet, but even more fortunate that my grandfather shipped it out to me from Hawaii last summer!! And so began the search for the perfect pair of lamps worthy enough to top this beautiful piece.
After much searching, I ended up bidding on and winning two vintage Hollywood Regency lamps with (what I imagined was) a lot of potential from an eBay seller in Florida. But when they arrived, they looked like they had been sitting out in the sun for about a mid-century. With the amount of dustballs and dirt (and that hideous neon green paint which I intended to paint over in gold), I was ready to give up on them. Luckily, my husband is a patient man and knows a little something about wiring, so he checked them out and convinced me to give them a shot.
Step #1 was to clean them inside and out — cue me gagging as we removed several furry dustballs (luckily no dead insects). After taking them apart and removing the hardware, we dipped each side into a paint tray of Simple Green and got to scrubbing away with toothbrushes. To my very pleasant surprise, the neon green scrubbed completely off the white! Seeing that gorgeous high-gloss white ceramic definitely kept me motivated. The neon green on the inside was much more stubborn, so we painted two coats of ceramic no-bake paint in gold to the interiors.
To top them off, I purchased these black paper snakeskin-embossed shades from Shades of Light, quite reasonable at a mere $39 each!
Next on the list: replace the fiberglass tubes inside if I can successfully find a manufacturer that can reproduce them for me.
And now for the encore: I found these amazing vintage 1970’s white carrera marble bookends on Etsy. Gasp!
I do believe our hard work and (my husband’s) persistence paid off!
…xoxo
Read more shop talk here
Love what you did w the lamps! Love your blog too. Keep up the great work.
xo,
cristin
Thanks Cristin, it was fun! We’ve done a few more refurbishing projects that I’ll post on eventually. ;o)
They look awesome!! So clean and fresh in white! And the gold inside just makes them seem so glam :)
Brittany I wish you could have personally seen how scary they were prior! I guess it gives us all inspiration to refurbish old items…you never know!
Simply gorgeous! You have a great eye! Loved touring your home on MadebyGirl!
Thank you Laura! Checked out your blog…love your style! Super classy and chic.
Hey Erika, Can you tell me how glossy your shades are? I ordered 2 of these and they have a slight lustre, definitely NOT glossy. Let me know pls, shoot me an email at jen@madebygirl.com
Im trying to get this across to shades of light…to see if there is any issue…
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