Replacing a lamp socket This is my table lamp in my family room. It has been flickering a bit lately. I've mostly tried to to ignore it but at night is hard to do that. So I thought I can fix this or complain about it. It's not like some fairy is going to come in my house and fix everything. Ok here goes. Thank goodness for Google!

First I took the top apart. So far no problem. I'm all about taking things apart. I bought a new socket replacement at Lowe's.

I needed to cut the wires a bit so that they were split into a "Y". This was just enough so that there was enough to twist in place.

Then I re-twisted the wires around to screws for the connection. I know I left out a lot of steps and photos but the point I'm trying to make is that I did it myself!

Actually all the information was on the internet. Anyone can do this.

Stairs in progress

Well I am still struggling with getting my stairs finished. If ya don't remember, I started several months ago on this project. I can't remember exactly because it's been so long. The stairs were covered in a horrible carpet that was there when we moved in. I wanted hard wood stairs every since we moved in. Several years ago(1986) we bought our first home in Norfolk, Virginia. It was built in the 1920's. I just loved all the wood floors and the hard wood stairs. (we refinished those too) Well after a couple military moves later and we ended up here. But with three children I wasn't up to home refinishing.

Fast forward 14 years and I'm a single mom. Then three years went by trying to recover from that trauma. That sounds really strange admitting that on my blog.

OK back to the stairs.

Well, between working full time and the holidays, time has slipped up on me.

I have been working on it a little at a time. And remember I have all that caulking to be removed. Remember the before picture below.

I now have most of the risers painted and almost all of the treads are ready for stain. Yea!

You can see in this photo that there is quite a bit of wood filler used.

Friday after school I stained the first tread. I think it looks really good! It looks like it's been there forever. It's not brand new but better. You know, like it's aged. I love it!

Well I got up this morning and stained the second tread and as you can see it is about two shades darker! Don't know what happened. All I can do now is to second coat the first one and try and match the second. Don't know what will happen but I'm marching on.

Keep in touch and maybe you can see the finished work. Just pray it gets finished soon!