Hello! Welcome to the first non-Wesley-related post-Wesley blog post. I predict about three more minutes to write this post, so let's get to it. A month or so ago, when hormones hijacked my brain and used my body to rent a car and spend 6 hours in Ikea, I picked up this Hektar floor lamp for $70. I went with this dark gray finish because it was $10 cheaper than the bronzier one. That was short-sighted, because the bronze one was better. But it too might have suffered from the fatal flaw this one did, once we got it home and assembled:

Do you see what I see? I see a salon-style hair dryer perched menacingly/welcomingly, depending on your point of view, over the old-fashioned salon-style chair. And once I saw that, I couldn't unsee it. And I HATED it. It's not like I'm prone to weak feelings on any particular subject, but this lamp really got my goat. Every time I looked at it, I resented it, and the $70 (!) I spent on it, PLUS the cost of rental car. I had thought that it would lend some height - and some light - to the room, and instead, it just lent an era of flea market tackiness/industrialness/hair salon-ness. So I got to work.

First things first: I'm a realist. I moved the damn thing from behind the chair to over by the couch. That took care of a lot of the salon-ness. Then I broke out my gold acrylic paint - the same stuff I used to heart-ify Lou's pillow - and painted the inside of the shade.

This picture's after the first coat. I just brushed it on with a large craft brush, and ended up with about four coats - or the entirety of what was left of my tube of acrylic paint. You can see some brush strokes in the right light, but I'm actually kind of digging them. And in the meantime, the gold paint took this lamp from glaring white eye sore to seamless part of the room. It's kind of amazing.

Finally, I topped things off with a pretty, old-fashioned, globe light bulb.

I can't tell you how nice it is to not walk into this room and have a menacing showdown with that lamp every time. All for about $1.50 in paint and maybe thirty minutes. So if you have something that's bugging you, paint it gold. See what happens.

And we made it! I even have time to insert this photo:

Wesley hated that stupid lamp, too. Okay - see ya Wednesday!