New lamps for old

I went to IKEA yesterday with my friend Mel. I wanted to get a dresser for the boys’ bedroom and she was looking for a desk for her daughter’s room. I ended up buying 2 dressers, each with 6 drawers (4 boxes) and she found a desk with attached side shelving units. (2 boxes) I have never appreciated the space in a mini van like I did yesterday.

But of course you can’t just pick up the furniture you want & go. First you have to walk through the marketplace full of stuff to put on or in or next to the furniture you want to buy. Kitchenware, plates, picture frames, bins of assorted sized and materials, garden things, hooks and shelves, pillows and curtains.

And lamps.

Mel wanted to get a Chinese lantern lampshade while we were there and after pondering the various hanging lamps, that were basically a cord with a plug on one end and a light fixture on the other that you hang from a cup hook on your ceiling (no wiring required) I, finally, at long long last, replaced a standing pillar lamp that I have loathed & despised for 14 years but just never found anything to replace it with.

This lamp came to us from a friend, who was moving. He got it from his grandmother who had bought it, along with most of his living room furniture, from some government auction sale. So it is a 4th hand hideous heavy monstrosity of a lamp to begin with. I hated it when he owned it, but DH can’t turn down free furniture.

This photo is from 2005

The huge ugly lampshade fell and cracked that year & was so huge I never found another of appropriate size despite buying the largest lampshades I could find

This photo is from 2007

The detested sofa in this photo is the same as the tan sofa in the 2005 photo, just with a new slipcover, in a last vain attempt to make it less horrible than it was.

We got the sofa at the same time from the same friend who got from the same grandma who bought it at auction. Words cannot describe how much I hated that sofa, though if you were reading this blog in 2006 & 2007 you know that isn’t quite true because I actually devoted many posts to that exact subject.

It was a ‘perfectly good sofa’ meaning yes, you could sit on it without pain & stand up with only minor effort if you were under 60, so I could never convince DH we needed to spend money on a new one. A couple months after this photo was taken my parents sold their home in WV and gave me their reclining sofa set. Which is a perfectly good sofa set, I like it and am delighted to have it, it just clashes horribly with everything else we own.

I am 42 years old and have never had my own sofa. Someday, when the kids are grown I am buying a leather one. I’ve started saving for it now.

The loathed & despised lamp is also a ‘perfectly good lamp’ in it’s way. It does cast light, which is it’s prime function. Can’t argue with that. DH cannot be convinced that buying another stand lamp is necessary, so I have lived with the horrid thing for going on 14 years now.

But NO MORE!  I saw those hanging lamps and knew I was at long last free of the unwanted pillar lamp.

Behold!

A perfectly adequate replacement lamp. $12.99 (and the sofa from my parent’s house)

It’s not stunning. I admit. My joy in it right now come solely because it is not the hated pillar lamp.

BUT! The plain boring white shade is replaceable! In time I can get a crinkle paper shade. Or a bright blue round globe. Or a long skinny green tube. I could even get a sort of paper pie plate with colored beads dangling from it as a shade! Endless possibilities!

Not to mention it’s another excuse to go to IKEA. I hadn’t been in 6 years.

That is way too long between IKEA visits.

Photos of the new dressers will be up sometime next week. I have to assemble them & it’s probably going to take me all day Saturday to do that.