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As you know, we’re great fans of doing as much as we can around the house, not only because we like to save money where we can, but also because we’ve come to enjoy it. So when Keepmoat asked us to take part in the Affordable Home Tips challenge, we of course jumped at the chance to get creative.
After spending about 5 days coming up with and discarding what felt like about a million ideas, we finally decided on the project – a new DIY copper lamp for our dining room sideboard.
Finding a new lamp has been on our to-do list for such a long time, but with so much building work going on around here it’s kind of always slipped down the list of priorities.
With the affordable home tips challenge set, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally upgrade our temporary lighting solution.
If you’d like to make one of your own, this is what you’ll need:
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- Lamp cord set
- Copper pipe
- Copper stop ends
- Pipe cutter
- Drill & drill bits
- Lampshade
- Fine steel wool
- Triangular piece of wood
- Superglue
This is how to make a DIY copper lamp like ours:
#1 Prepare your copper pipe
Start by working out the size you want your lamp to be. We wanted a fairly large lamp, so cut our copper pipe into three 66cm long pieces with the help of a pipe cutter.
#2 Prepare your light fitting
Next, you’ll have to prepare the part of the lamp that will hold your light fitting. For this, we used a small piece of plywood that we still had lying around.
Cut the wood into a triangle with equal sides. Then using a flat wood drill bit to drill three holes – one at each corner – an equal distance from each tip. Make sure that the holes are just indentations rather than holes that go all the way through the wood. These are the holes that your copper pipes will slot into, so you’ll have to drill into the wood at an angle so that the pieces of pipe will also be slotted in at an angle.
Then drill a large hole in the centre of the triangle for the light fitting to go through (we used a Forstner bit to drill it). To keep everything looking good, we then gave the wood a quick coat of black paint, but that’s of course totally optional.
#3 Prepare your cable
Always remember to be safe! Have any electrical work done by a professional!
Take one of your copper pipe pieces and drill a hole a few centimetres away from each of the ends. Then, using the holes that you’ve just drilled, push your lamp cord through the pipe and then attach the plug to the end of your cable.
#4 Assemble your lamp
Using the superglue, attach the copper stop ends to your pipe pieces before glueing the top ends of the pipes into the indentations you prepared in the wooden triangle. The light fitting itself has to be placed through the larger hole in the middle of the triangle.
All that’s left to do is attach your lampshade and plug in your new lamp.
Depending on how secure the copper pipes are attached to the wooden triangle, you may have to add a bit of extra structural strength by glueing the crossing pipes together. We did this and it’s definitely made the lamp more stable. Finally, give the copper pipes a polish with some fine steel wool.
Cost Breakdown:
15mm Copper pipe £5.99
15mm Copper stop ends £2.18
Lampshade £35
Lamp cord set £3
Plug £0.75
Small piece plywood (already owned)
Total: £46.92
We’re really happy with how the lamp turned out. It was surprisingly easy to make and definitely looks better than the (not so) temporary bedside light that we’d been using on our sideboard up till now.
Making something yourself is so satisfying and best of all you get exactly what you want in the size you want and if we ever get round to it, we’ve also decided that it would be fun to paint the inside of the lampshade a fun colour or possibly even attach some copper leaf.
Do you have any affordable home tips to share? Have you ever made a lamp? What colour would you paint the inside of the lampshade?
Rosebud Ree says
Love this did I’m willing to try it out! If I may ask what size lampshade was used in the project?
Christine says
I think that this is the lampshade we used. It’s 49cm x 26cm. Really you could use any size you’d like. Let us know if you have any other questions. Happy crafting!
Cx
Jessica@CapeofDreams says
This is awesome. Great job!
Christine says
Thanks Jessica! So excited to see how youru denim chair project turns out – I’m sure it’s going to be amazing!
Cx
Ali Powers says
Nice DIY lamp. Thanks for the great tips.
I shared this article on DIY best posts.
Christine says
Glad you like it, Ali and thanks for sharing!
Cx