Wall Lamp

I’ve made some bedside wall lamps in my further attempts to update the bedroom at the request of my wife.
More photos here: https://plus.google.com/photos/105746913815785526574/albums/5771322480915974017

(WOOD) – I used poplar, only because I had an 8 foot board of it sitting in my garage for over a year.

(STAIN) – Poplar seems to look pretty nice with some mahogany oil stain and mohogany gel stain to darken it up even more. Gel stain is always a bit of a pain for me though I keep using it on woods that don’t look naturally beautiful with danish oil.

(ELECTRICAL) – I used a “twin cluster socket” which houses the light bulbs which I bought at the local bigbox store along with the chord. The chord didn’t have an inline switch so I installed a “Leviton Feed-through Cord Switch” which I purchased from amazon. I also use a “3-level touch pad dimmer” for each which I have found at all bigbox stores. Used 75 watt regular bulbs as the “dimmable” CFL’s I purchased flickered when dimmed.

(SHADE) – I used “styrene” with one adhesive side. Styrene is a thin translucent plastic that provides form to your fabric or paper. I purchased this from a local lamp store but you can get it at Lampshop.com. For the material, I used linen which I purchased from a local fabric store. The linen MADE these lamps look amazing with its texture that Really shows when the light is on. Kind of hard to see in that first pic but in person these look so much better. I cut the styrene to shape and did a test fit for each lamp. I bent the styrene prior to applying the linen by clamping a board on each side and then bending the styrene. Then I removed the adhesive backing and carefully layed it out on the linen and trimmed the excess linen off.

(FABRICATION) – The main frame is glue and lap joints. The upper and lower shade frames are mitre and glue. The grooves for the shade are 1/8” wide and 3/16” deep. For the center wood piece which houses the light fixure I attached with 2 Kreg pocket hole screws. I routed a groove in the back of the frame for the chord to follow along. I also carefully hammered staples into the back of one slat to keep the chord from showing there as well.

(ASSEMBLY) – I screwed in the top and bottom frame which house the shade. This helps with installation of the shade and so it can be removed in the future if we need to replace the shade. I also screwed in the lower vertical slats so that they could be easily repaired or replaced if one of them broke or warped.