Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Touch Control Lamp Update

Since I have had so many site hits on my previous touch control lamp post, I decided I needed to update the information. I bought this simple kit from Lowe's:
The kit is probably available at any hardware store and is actually a kit for making a lamp out of anything so if you are using it to change out your touch control lamp you won't use every single piece. It was a very simple installation and I will give you some tips here that will not be on the instructions.
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1) Lay your lamp out and lay out the new parts and you will see that you can keep some of your parts and just add the new things.
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2) Use some sort of wire cutters to make it simpler to pull the old cord and parts from the lamp.
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3) Make sure you don't attach anything until the new cord is threaded through your lamp base.
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4) If you have very narrow areas in your lamp base like I did (it was only about 1/2 inch diameter) you will have a hard time threading the cord through it. I took a rubber coated wire, made it very straight and ran that through from the top then attached that to the electrical cord with a small piece of masking tape to pull it through. If you start with this method it will save you a lot of time. If you don't have wire, straighten a cheap metal coat hanger.
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I hope this information is helpful. I think the kit was around $12. Now I have my pretty lamp back with a basic push through switch:

Feel free to ask me any questions, and if you are getting here late, just e-mail me. My e-mail address is on my profile. Good luck!

6 comments:

Carole said...

Gee, very cool post! If I was wondering how to fix my old touch lamp (and I'm not because I threw my old touch lamp away because it was haunted) then I'd sure be glad to run across this post of yours. To bad I decided it was haunted before asking you.

Remember at the neighbor's Christmas party how he had that brown "wine" bottle with the sparkly little Christmas lights inside? I still want to make one of those, and I have a brown bottle of Meade that I'm going to use...one of these days. Don't need it until Christmas though...so I'm in no hurry. This post reminded me of it again though.

Jazz said...

I've re-done a few lamps. I try to keep the old lamps until I need to feel sort of intelligent, then I re-wire them. Hell, I I can do electrical stuff, I'm not a TOTAL spaz, eh?

Anonymous said...

Is there no end to the stuff you can do?

Big Brother said...

You're a veritable handy woman geewits... plumbing, electricity, but please don't do both at the same time. ;o)

geewits said...

Carole,
~~What is it with you and haunted electrical things? Good luck with the Christmas light wine bottle lamp!

Jazz,
~~I'm impressed! Electrical stuff scares me. I thiught the lamp might blow up when I plugged it in.

Xup,
~~Yes there is. I will NOT unseat a toilet ever again.

BB,
~~Ha hah ha! My first two husbands were both electrical engineers and if I only had a dollar for every time I heard, "Water and electricity don't mix."

Carole said...

If a touch lamp comes on by itself in the middle of the night...I consider that a haunting! Even if it is a haunting by the power company surges in peak usage during the summer time! hee hee