HIGHPOINT CIRCLE: lamps

Come and listen to a tale and decide....what choice would you have made?

The story begins a year or two ago at a garage sale. I bought two matching lamps (minus the shades) for $15. One had need of a minor repair, but very good bones...Pottery Barn bones, if you know what I mean. Here's the way the lamps came to me (minus the shades)

Are you noticing the Pottery Barn"ness"? I had seen a similar lamp in the PB catalogue but it was painted white and distressed--an easy fix that I had always intended from the moment I saw them. BUT, a good friend, who advice I admire, thought they were gorgeous the way they were and urged me NOT to paint them. What to do???? So they sat unpainted until I couldn't stand it any more and took them out in the yard and sprayed them!

A closeup of the distressing on lamp #1

A closeup of lamp #2. Each lamp dictated how it would be distressed.

I love them so much more now! I liked them before, but I have so much stained wood in my house that I'd love to paint, it is only a matter of time before I paint any unattached piece of wood that I encounter! I've got the bug to paint and I love white, ivory, antique white, etc...

Here's some of the inspiration

Here are the lamps final resting places in our house...

That concludes this tale of two lamps. What do you think? Are you a stained wood is beautiful sort-of-person, or paint and distress sort-of-person? There was a third option I played around in my head with--strip them and leave them unfinished in a Restoration Hardware sort of way. You can see what my choice was.

As always, thanks for reading...