Apartment Redress: Vintage Lamp Rewire Finished!

DSC_0054  We went to the hardware store and picked up all the parts to replace every electrical related piece on this little guy + we added the feature of a snazy little clicker on the cord because “Kristin, you can’t reach the top of the frig, how are you going to turn that on?” Truer words were never spoken. Well, I can reach, but somehow stretching on my tippy toes to click on a porcelain lamp seems like a bad idea. 

Light socket, lamp cord wire (10 feet), plug, cord switch = $11.54 (or something close to that). + this great tutorial I mentioned in part I of the project. It has all the safety tips and technical info you will need.  

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First we ran the wire through it. 

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Then we split and stripped one end that we fed through the hole. If you twist the wires, they are easier to fit around the screws, you can see the difference in the image below. You do not want any stray wires poking out – that’s how I got shocked and why I decided to gut and rewire the whole lamp instead of just replacing the socket. 

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Here is how you add a switch to the cord. It’s actually really easy. We did it to another lamp I had when the socket switch went out. It was a lot cheaper to just install a wire switch than replace the socket. 

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And that was that. Jason helped a lot. In fact I would credit him about 55% of the work and 80% know how. It took our joint forces about a half hour minus the run to the hardware store. 

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Oh and just for the record, I think most lamp cords are about 6 feet long. I made this longer because I knew it would be going on the frig in the kitchen. I wanted it to be able to reach the outlet without an extension cord.


4 thoughts on “Apartment Redress: Vintage Lamp Rewire Finished!

  1. Wow, thanks for this timely post! I just moved into a new place and had thought about getting some vintage lamps–but was afraid of the old wiring. Now that I know that rewiring isn’t rocket science I’m very willing to give it a try!

    1. I was so happy I didn’t have to junk this little guy. And how easy it was to fix. Feel free to email me with any questions. And make sure to read the tutorial I linked to. Like I said, it has a lot of great safety tips – especially detailed which is great for people like me who are totally new to anything to do with wire :)

  2.  what a simple strategy of this apartment that show you the main important resources which is the “electronic”……..i learned so many things of this when i schooling in electrical course…. 

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