Lamp Shade Hack

Don't you hate it when you score a great thrifty find, only to realize that the amount of work you have to put into it to make it usable is more than a new one would cost?  This is what I'm always trying to avoid when shopping in thrift stores.  But sometimes a plan just doesn't come together like you think it will.  Then you need a hack.  As in, to hack in to a system and make it work for you in a way it probably wasn't originally intended.  Today, I'm sharing a cool hack that my husband came up with for retrofitting a lamp with an uno socket.

What's an uno socket?  That's the term for the bulb socket that has a little flared lip on it so a lamp shade doesn't need a harp (the metal support thing that looks like a lyre, with a finial on top).  Uno sockets are usually found on table lamps or smaller accent lamps, since larger floor lamps require larger shades, with more room for a harp.

Anyway, back at the fun part of the ranch, I found this gorgeous glass lamp base at Goodwill for $3.99, then I scored this beautiful lamp shade on sale, and with a coupon, from World Market, so this was a pretty thrifty pairing.  But when I got the lamp shade home, I realized it was the wrong kind for my lamp base.  I needed an uno socket to be able to use the lamp shade, but I really didn't want to rewire the whole lamp.

Not to be deterred, I got online and did a search for "uno socket retrofits" and found that you can buy them, but at almost the same cost of the whole lamp and shade!  Now I was discouraged, and complained to my husband.  Always one to support me spending less money, he came up with the brilliant plan to use the neck from a gallon milk jug to make a flange around the socket that the shade could sit on.  Here's how it works.

1. First, I cut the neck off of a gallon jug.
2. Then trimmed it a little, to take off the sharp edges.
   
3. Checked to make sure it fit the lamp and shade.
   
4. Layered the milk jug piece on the socket, then the shade, then the bulb.
   

Now my lamp shade is sittin' pretty, with the whole lamp costing less than $11.00!

Sometimes you just need to think out of the box, and into the jug, to solve a problem.