Ski Pole Floor Lamp tutorial

Hi gals! I hope your weekend has been restful and full of creativity. Yes, did you try a new recipe? Guess what.....you're being creative. Did you pt together a new outfit? Yes. Creative. Rearrange a room? Creative.

Step out of your comfort zone? Creative and hard so you get bonus points for that! Sorry, I can't give cash back for all these points but you'd only buy more things and go into debt and I can't be apart of that.

So just enjoy the fact that you did something different!!!

And because we are different here at Reposhture, I promised I'd show you how I used ski poles a little differently to make a floor lamp.

You can go here to find out why on earth I needed ski poles in the first place!

SO I snagged these bamboo ski poles for $9.95! at the local thrift shop and I already had a shade that I got for $0.95.

I also needed to purchase a lamp kit from the Home Depot and I also figured I would need a longer nipple ( is it weird that I feel slightly uncomfortable writing that in my blog?) for the lamp kit to work.



This cost $7.50 and the extra nipples cost $2.50. So my grand total to make the floor lamp was about $18.00!

Okay quick review of what you need:

Legs of some sort
shade
lamp kit
might need longer nipple ( please don't judge me. Figures a man named this piece of hardware!!!)
piece of wood about 2" x 2"
screws and screw driver bit
Drill and drill bit (you had to know this would involve power tools)
fishing line or clear heavy duty thread

Okay now you are ready to get started.

Measure your nipple and pick a drill bit that is the same size around. Clamp your wood and drill all the way through.

It should look like this when you are done. You'll see why in a minute.

Assemble you light kit according to the instructions. I am not giving instructions because they really do a nice job on the back So just follow carefully and you'll be fine.  Also the piece of wood is so you can attach the poles to the lamp kit with screws. You can make this as long or as short as you want. My shade was pretty big and I don't like a lot of the underthings to show so I used a piece of wood about 3.5" long.

Notice the wire is going through the bottom of the wood, through the nipple and then into the socket. 

CHECK THAT IT WORKS! Now you can move on to attaching the legs.

 You can tell I am not a skier because I just assumed the poles would be all the same length! Not so Joe!

One set was about 2" shorter than the other.  I removed the wrist holders (?) which left a convenient opening in which to thread the screws. So I screwed the two longer poles opposite each other on the wood. And then added the shorter poles to the other sides. This was the hard part as I had to make sure they were actually sitting on the ground and not just hanging there looking ridiculous.

You will also need to screw them left or right of center as you do not want to hit the metal nipple running through the wood. I had to use 2" screws. Just hold up your screw next to the pole (leg) and wood and make sure that once the screw is through the handle, you still have about 1/2" that will go into the wood. Then you'll be fine.

Here is a closeup of the final product. The screws also allowed me to adjust the legs a bit to make the lamp stand straight.  When I was all done and had the legs how I wanted, I took some fishing line and secured each opposite set of legs so the legs had some further stability other than just being attached at the top.

I may try and add something else to make it a little more stable but for now it is just fine.

 So here she is, my ski pole, fishing line, quad-pod (instead of tripod) floor lamp for under $20!

Maybe I should call it the outdoors man lamp since I have so many things for outdoor sports involved here.

2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness," has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

Always being renewed,