It's not gross. It's fine and perfectly functional. It just doesn't fit in with anything in the rest of the room. This has been bothering me for three years. This morning I decided I couldn't take it anymore, so I hunted around the apartment to see what we had. Enter this janky lampshade:
Way back when, when my boyfriend first moved in, I used a hot glue gun to recover this shade (and its twin) in a navy/white striped fabric. I grew tired of that bedroom scheme in a hot minute. It wasn't my style and was one of the many missteps we made in trying to find a style that represents us both. At some point, I ripped off the hot-glued fabric and used spray adhesive to slap on some of the left over suzani fabric we've used in the living room. This was during the purgatory period when we'd swapped out the navy/white stuff for a bit more color, but still had navy walls so that everything clashed. It was wonderful.
Anyways. I held onto these shades just in case, though they're covered in hardened hot glue and are sticky with spray adhesive (and the accompanying dust and lint it attracts). With nothing to lose, I decided I'd try out an idea for the ceiling fan. Here's what happened:
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and...
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| Different diffuser to come. |
I've seen a lot of ceiling fan redos with lampshades and chandeliers, but nothing that particularly struck my fancy. A lot of the revamps call attention to the fan; I want to draw attention away. If it has to be there, I want it to be inconspicuous. The closest thing I've come to finding a solution are ceiling fan drum shade kits, but those were also larger than I'd like and start at 70 bucks.
So I decided to cut my lampshade down. As finicky as I am, I'm also not good at being patient and/or careful when I want something done NOW, so I used a box-cutter and free-handed my line.
Which yielded this nice bit of unevenness:
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I did. So I used my box-cutter, more carefully this time, to even things up.
My original plan was to just set up the basic structure of the shade and then eventually recover it with fabric to hide the gluey parts. But then I decided to see if it could be salvaged. I used the box-cutter to pick off a lot of the dried glue, and used a vinegar/water spray to help remove the stickiness of the spray adhesive. A lint roller took care of anything that was still stuck to the shade.
If it wasn't going to be covered, I had to figure out what to do with the jagged top. Out came the electrical tape again for black trim.
Next up was figuring out how to make a diffuser, like the one on our pendant lamp above the dining table:
I didn't want to look up and see bare light bulbs. So I continued on my quest to use junk I found around the house. A shopping bag and contact paper? OK!
After a frustrating game of line-up-the-holes-with-the-pull-cords, I screwed the finial back onto that middle part.
The diffuser is temporary given that it's not an even circle, is too small, and is made out of a paper bag. But it works for now!
Fin.