I can’t remember exactly when I discovered that it was not actually very hard, to re-wire table lamps, and do things like replace plugs and swap out one-way sockets for three-way, so that an ordinary lamp could be transformed into a reading lamp. At a guess, I had watched Dad take stuff apart and put things back together… and well, really, it didn’t seem to be anything very complicated. Stripping half an inch of insulation off the ends of the wires, threading them through the lamp-base and securing the bare wires around the little screws in the socket base – this is not rocket science. It’s about as challenging as replacing a light-bulb.

At some point – about the time that we returned from Europe – I discovered that all the little bits that hold a lamp together and attach a shade are pretty much a standard thread. We’ve bought lamps at the thrift-shop or at yard-sales because they have a pretty base – and it’s very pleasing, how much better they will look, immediately upon installing new hardware and a nicer shade. And never mind the wiring – last month, Blondie bought a pair of inexpensive 1930’s era decorative lamps that you wouldn’t dare plug in. The wiring was that crumbly – I swear it looked like one of those pictures of a dangerous example of faulty wiring in a brochure handed out by the fire department. New hardware, new wiring, new sockets, all the way around; amazing how much nicer they looked, almost at once.

I have a whole basket full of those essential lamp pieces, most of them scrounged from various broken lamps. Never know when you will need an essential bit, you see. Some of my favorite lamps have bit the dust, since I took up the carpets and painted the concrete floors in the house. Two weeks ago, the dogs got rowdy and knocked over a pretty little bedside lamp, a blue and white vase-type that I bought in Greece, and in the same week, Blondie sat back suddenly in the rocking chair, and there went a lamp that I had bought in Korea, a blue and white bowl that I saw in a shop in Itaewon and had converted. Not to fear, though – for we salvaged all the parts, the wooden base and top, and the metal rod that ran up through the middle, the shade and the socket.

Last weekend, Blondie, the Queen of All Yard Sales, spied three lamps for sale in a neighbor’s garage – all blue and white painted china bases, all vaguely Oriental in design, in good shape and all three for a mere pittance. One of them most particularly resembled the Korean bowl, and as it was approximately the same dimensions, I thought I would be able to remove the brass base and top to it, and replace them with the wooden base and fittings from the Korean lamp – and I would have something that came very close in looks to it.

Only the hex-nut that held the whole thing together at the bottom was apparently tightened on at the factory by Godzilla himself. Not even with a crescent-wrench could we get it to budge – and Blondie and I tried separately and together, and with a spritz of liquid wrench, that is supposed to make it easy to unscrew anything.

There was only one thing to do. And that was to take it to Pep Boys. Really, any garage would have done, but Pep-Boys was open on Sunday. Where else do you find the strength and the technology to separate metal bolts from the threads they are apparently frozen onto, than at an auto mechanics?

But the manager did look at me and ask, warily, “This is at your own risk of course. It’s not a priceless Ming vase, is it?”

“Five-dollar yard-sale special,” I said, “Have at it.” It took one of the mechanics about two minutes and all the other mechanics came to look, shaking their heads.

The manager did say afterwards that it was the weirdest request that anyone has ever come to Pep-Boys with. That is my home craft advice for the week – bet you never heard this from Martha Stewart. Also, you can, in some places, take cast-iron pots to a body shop to have the rust sand-blasted off them – and I wish I could remember how I came by these two little bits of wisdom.