Building a Floor Lamp-Discussion and Plans

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all are doing well and your autumn is getting off to a pleasant season.

My living room doesn't have any overhead lighting with the result that in order to read something, we have to have the windows open during the day or use the lights in the kitchen to illuminate this room. Basically we have really poor lighting in the living room. Now we did have a floor lamp in one corner of the living room but that is broken and all attempts to fix it have left it more broken than before. So it's time to do something about it.

There is a very simple floor lamp plan that was published online by Better Homes and Gardens at http://www.bhg.com/decorating/do-it-yourself/accents/how-to-build-your-own-floor-lamp/.
The lamp is a very simple lamp that can easily be made with simple tools and if you have a never ending scrap wood pile like I do, it could be made with scrap lumber. What's not to like about that?

Plan

Make a floor lamp out of some leftover pine 1"x2"s and hopefully illuminate this vampire cave that passes for a living room of mine.

Photos

Ok, here we go:

The plans call for 2x2 lumber and I had some nice, clear, usable 1x2 pine that I laminated together-in fact I had enough for the center post, the legs and the arm that the shade will hang from:

It took a day for all the laminating and cutting the parts to be finished:

And I beveled the ends of the legs so I won't stub my toe on a sharp corner on the floor:

The plans also call for a bracket that attaches to the central post and the arm. I bought a silver metal one and decided to paint it a different color. So I sprayed it with primer and set it aside to dry:

The next thing I did was to stain the wooden parts with Minwax penetrating stain/red chestnut stain and that looks pretty good. Once that was finished, I've taken them to my deck for finishing: 

Here is the central post after I've applied a coat of polyurethane. This is going to look nice:

Tomorrow, I'm going assemble the wooden part of the lamp and try and figure out the lamp kit I purchased for it. I'll also paint the metal bracket and get that ready to be installed. 

In the meantime, enjoy the fall colors and I'll see you tomorrow.

Stay tuned,
VW