I like unusual lamps. I didn't see this one until about five minutes before they put it up for auction. I decided I could make it pretty again.
This thing was filthy. The lamp shade wasn't salvageable so it went into the trash can. Then I started to disassemble the lamp to clean it and rewire it.
When I was able to free the ceramic armadillo I could see the amount of dust and dirt hiding underneath.
Before I disassembled it, I always take a photo of how it was assembled. You would think you would remember, but I don't. You wouldn't believe the number of times I have had to take apart a "finished" lamp because I didn't have it assembled correctly (or I had forgotten a piece).
I removed the ceramic armadillo and gave it a bath (it was disgustingly dirty). When I was trying to clean the base, I realized the original polyurethane layer needed to be stripped and reapplied.
I put a coat of gel stripper on the top of the base. It took three coats to get the thick layer of original poly off.
Then I hit it with my sander to get the last of the poly off and to smooth it out.
Then I applied a new coat of poly (glossy). The above image shows the uncoated vs coated wood.
Side note: I typically would have removed the threaded rod before the poly removal process but this was glued in place and I think the wood would have been damaged if I tried to force it out so I decided to work around it.
Then I rewired it. I purchased a lamp kit at Walmart. The instructions are easy to follow and there are lots of tutorials online so I didn't share the step by step process here. It took less than 10 minutes to rewire the lamp.
I forgot to take a singular image of the armadillo lamp before I took it to the shop. I did add a new burlap lamp shade (garage sale find) so now it is clean, rewired and ready for a mancave!