If the second time you don’t succeed, try, try again (three’s a charm, right?).

This has become the Saga of the Lamp.

Remember this?

It was a thrift store lamp that I spray painted and added a shade to make a bigger and better lamp for my son’s room. Or, so I thought. He hated it.

He said he missed his old lamp and wanted one like it, with a sports theme.

So I recovered the lamp shade and it turned out great. Here is the new and improved lamp:

Fabulous, right? Problem solved, right?

Not so fast.

As it turns out, the lampshade kept tipping to the side because it didn’t quite fit in the harp for the lamp. My son, lover of order and all things in their place, hated it. Again.

Back to the drawing board.

I thought about what to do. He liked the shade, but not on that lamp base. I didn’t have another lamp base that was the right scale.

So I went to my happy place to investigate…Ikea.

Ikea has sockets that you can hang from the ceiling and create a hanging pendant light fixture. For $5.00 each, you can’t beat it.

It’s easy to install – just screw hooks into the ceiling and wrap the cord around the hooks according to the instructions. Then just plug it in. Perfect, right?

Guess again. It can’t be that easy with this project, for some reason.

The Hemma cords from Ikea do not have on/off switches. Problem #1. And it was a two-pronged plug, so a power strip wouldn’t solve this problem. Problem #2.

I researched what to do on the Internet. I could install a switch. I could use The Clapper (that kind of intrigued me).

I ended up with something much easier and much quieter. I found a dimmer switch that you plug into the wall and then plug the lamp into the switch.

Perfect! He can turn the lamp on and off with this switch and never even have to sit up in bed.

Score!

And what did my son think?

“Mom, this is cool!”

Whew.

Moral of the story?

First, it’s hard to please an eight-year-old.

Second, if at first you don’t succeed, don’t give up. Keep trying. At the end of the day, the lamp still cost me relatively little (shade + corded socket + dimmer switch) and I got to use the thrift store lamp in another room:

That’s the $6.99 lamp base with a lamp shade I bought on clearance at Target for $5.99. Still a bargain.

Thanks for stopping by!