DIY Lamp Re-do

Every once in a while I look at something in our house and think, "surely I can change that and make it look better." And every time I pass that object in the house, I think of it again.  One such object in our house is a brown, masculine looking lamp we have had since we got married a few years ago.  It was thrifted and I loved it in our first apartment.  All the walls were light and the brown and wicker of the lamp went well with our furniture and decor.

After moving to our rental house, most of the walls were already painted and the rooms were generally darker because we now only have two sides of the house that have windows. So in an effort to lighten things up, I have been exchanging many of our once darker accessories for lighter ones or painting them to lighten our space.  This lamp was one of the darker spots in our living room.  I've seen different tutorials on other blogs on how to recover a lamp shade, and it seemed simple enough.

In my zeal to get started one Saturday morning, I neglected to take a good shot of the lamp before I got started.  I went through some of our pictures of our old apartments to see if there was a good shot of it. Below is a picture of our first apartment together.  There was no good shot of the lamp, but at least you can see what I mean by being dark and masculine looking.  The lamp in question is actually the one on the fireplace mantel.  Its interesting to see how many other objects in this picture have since been changed or been repurposed. 

And here is a shot of our second apartment with the lamp on. Please excuse our mess :) I think I was in the midst of unpacking/redecorating after moving.

Though I loved the lamp for our first two homes together, it was ready for a makeover.  So I started off by taking it apart. Well, my wonderful hubby took it apart for me when I couldn't figure it out :)  My plan was to spray paint the dark metal parts of the lamp a silver, and recover the lamp shade in a brighter, cleaner looking fabric.

The lamp base had leather-like strips that easily came off with a little tugging.  I decided they were what was really making the lamp look masculine so those went the way of the week-old leftovers. I covered what I didn't want spray painted with plastic and masking tape.

I went out back and spray painted and left the pieces to dry in the sun.  Meanwhile, to create a template for the new cover, I used the lamp shade and traced a good 2 inches out from the actual lamp with pencil.  I outlined my trace in photoshop to help you see it :) 

Once cut out, I took to the task of taking the fabric off of the lamp shade. It mostly came off with a seam ripper, but some brute force was necessary.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the lamp had a separately attached liner that I was able to keep intact. Score! 

I started with the top of the lamp shade and began hot gluing the new fabric to the rim of the shade. To help keep it in place while it dried (and not scald my fingers) I used binder clips (or so my husband calls them).  

 And last, but not least, I put the whole thing back together - my favorite part! 

 I didn't have any white spray paint, but one of these days I'll get around to spray painting the base wicker portion white.  In the mean time, I feel like it looks loads lighter and much less masculine.  I had hoped to give the wicker a bleached look, but when I tried bleach on it, nothing took.  Any suggestions would be most welcome! Have you redone something in your home? Did it turn out like expected?