upside down lamp – AfroMartha

When solving problems in your space, you really have to get creative. Sometimes you really have to dig deep. (No, DUH, right?)

My century old home has a lot of charm and character, along with a healthy dose of quirks…the biggest one being the lack of adequate lighting.

As such I’ve had to add a lot (A LOT) of lamps and other fixtures. Take for instance the family room addition from the 1970s.

There are NO overhead lights in this room at all. This room is fairly large at approximately 20ft by 12 feet.

Not. One. Single. Overhead. Light.

I got creative.

Thank you IKEA for letting me be Great on a puny budget. I have purchased a LOT of Hemma cords from you, and without you I would still be living in the dark, for lamps can be expensive!

I purchased this Ikea Trogsta floor lamp about a year ago.

It sat forlornly on the floor the conventional way for the better part of the year. There was, however, one problem. As you can tell it’s composed mainly of paperclips and plastic wrap. The thing was so durn flimsy the kids would knock it over constantly. I have a LOT of kids, and as you can probably tell, there’s a lot going on in my family room.

BUT, at $9.99 I had no choice but to shut my face and love it.

After standing it back up for the bajillionth time I decided it was time to do something different. It suddenly hit me that it’s flimsy construction makes it an ideal candidate for turning upside down. Genius!

The lamp spine is adjustable, so that meant that I could shorten it all the way down, flip it up and turn it into a cool light fixture. I even resorted to my favorite item, good ol’ pretty contact paper to pretty up the plain lamp-shade.

A screwed in a cup hook into the ceiling and fastened 2 zip ties to the base of the lamp and suspended the lamp onto the cup hook. That was it.

No more kids knocking things into the lamp and me having to let out a string of new and improved swear words smile lovingly at the kids.

And we still have light. Cute functional light.

So there ya have it folks. Next time you have a design dilemma, look up, down and sideways for your answer!