Lamp Makeover & Framed Wall-Mount TV Finishing Details

I’m almost at the finish line on this guest bedroom makeover, and I’m focusing on all of the final little finishing touches.

I wanted a lamp to go on the dresser, but instead of buying a new one, I decided to use one I already had. It was a cute little lamp, and there was really nothing wrong with it at all. It just seemed a little dull for the room. So I jazzed it up with some new clean white and gold paint and golden yellow fabric for the lamp shade.

I had originally purchased this lamp to use in the hallway bathroom, and I used it in there for quite a while. But then when I did the colorful makeover on that bathroom in 2019, it didn’t really go in there anymore, so it went into my stash of extra stuff. So I got it out to use in this room.

Many time, I can just tape off different areas of a lamp to paint them. But since this one had that glass section with the interesting shape sitting on the metal base, I didn’t think I could tape it off good enough to get really sharp lines between the glass part and the metal base. So I wanted to take it apart.

Lamps almost always come apart very easily. The key is to get at the nut that holds everything together at the bottom. Most lamps will have some sort of felt or other material covering this area.

So I peeled that off to reveal the nut, and then used pliers to twist the nut off.

Without removing the cord, the pieces won’t come apart completely, but I could at least separate them quite a bit so that they I could easily spray each section individually without getting overspray on the other sections.

(Peeve says hi! 😀 She was very curious about what I was doing.)

I wanted to protect the cord from overspray, so I did wrap some painters tape around the cord before spraying.

And then I took the lamp out to my spray paint area (yes, that’s the tailgate of my truck 😀 ) and painted the metal parts Rustoleum Vintage Gold and the glass section Rustoleum White.

While those pieces were drying, I covered the lampshade with some of the golden yellow velvet from the draperies. And I simply glued it on using Aleene’s Quick Dry Fabric Fusion adhesive.

I cut the fabric to about 1/4-inch past the edge of the shade on the top and bottom, and then wrapped it around to the inside and glued it.

And once I put the lamp back together, with all of those pieces re-stacked and then held together with that one little nut at the bottom, it was finished. I love quick and easy projects like this!

I also wanted to show y’all how I finished up the TV frame because I got quite a few questions about some details that I didn’t address. If you want the DIY instructions for building a TV frame, you can find those instructions here:

So the questions I get the most about my TV frames are about (1) where the cords are, and (2) how the TV has enough air circulation so that it doesn’t overheat.

Here’s the TV mounted on the wall without the frame. You can see that I’ve attached a 1″ x 2″ piece of lumber above the TV because that’s what the frame mounts to.

It’s a very simple design. You can see the top back section of the frame, and that section just slips right onto the 1″ x 2″ piece attached to the wall. And that’s it! It just hangs there. You can screw the pieces together if you want it more secure, but I’ve never had a problem with the frame just sitting on top of that brace.

As far as the cords go, I had an outlet installed on the wall where the TV would go. When I planned this room, I had intended to use a regular-height dresser (30-34 inches high), so I installed the outlet accordingly. Then I went and bought a dresser that was 10 inches taller, which means that the TV is higher than I had originally intended. That’s why the outlet shows below the TV on the wall, so I had to plan my frame accordingly so it wouldn’t sit on top of that outlet cover.

To plug the TV in, I used a short extension cord with a flat low profile plug. That way the regular plug on the TV cord and plug into the extension cord, and those can be wrapped and zip tied together and tucked into this area behind the TV.

And the flat low profile plug on the extension cord can plug into the outlet and it works just fine without pushing the TV away from the wall. (There are also special TV outlets that are made for installing behind TVs so that you can plug it directly in without a low profile plug, but I haven’t been able to find those locally in the last year or so. So the extension cord works just fine for me.)

To make the wall around the TV disappear, I painted this area solid black.

And then when I painted the frame, I painted the inside edge black as well. The rest of it is painted the trim color — Behr Polar Bear.

And here’s what it looks like with the frame back in place.

With the wall and the inside edge of the frame painted black, the gap between the TV and the frame disappears. But there’s a 3/4-inch gap all the way around the TV so that it can get plenty of air circulation. We’ve never had a problem with our TV in the breakfast room overheating, and it stays on for hours at a time.

Just as a reminder, here’s how it looked before those areas were painted black to make them disappear…

See how the wall is visible between the TV and the frame? That’s not a good look, in my opinion. So the black paint makes a very big difference in the finished look of the TV frame.

Those details make such a huge difference in a room, and those are the details that I get a little obsessed over. 😀