Your home’s new star attraction: a zigzag-shaped lamp

To create your lamp and shed a whole new light on your workspace, you first need to saw up the wood. Take the tape measure and the wooden strip and mark up two smaller strips of 5 cm and four strips of 10 cm. To ensure you saw in a straight line, use a steel square to mark up the lines at a 90-degree angle. Before you start sawing, clamp down the strip of wood with screw clamps to prevent it from slipping. Then put on your work gloves and safety glasses, and you can get started.

If the wooden panel that you’re going to use for the base of the lamp isn’t the right size, follow the same steps: measure 15 x 15 cm, secure the wood with screw clamps and saw in a straight line.

If the wooden panel that you’re going to use for the base of the lamp isn’t the right size, follow the same steps: measure 15 x 15 cm, secure the wood with screw clamps and saw in a straight line.

The lamp should be inserted directly into the centre of the base, so you first need to identify where that is. Lie down the set square diagonally across the wooden panel and draw a line from corner to corner. Then repeat with the other two corners. The point at which the two lines meet is the centre. To avoid drilling all the way through the wood (and instead creating a blind hole), use a drill bit stop. This enables you to define how deep you want to drill in advance. With our wooden panel, which is 3 cm thick, the hole should be a maximum 2 cm deep. Once the drill is set up properly, secure the panel to your worktop with screw clamps and drill away.

Now you can insert the wooden dowelling into the hole you’ve just drilled. To fix it in place, first insert some wood glue. Make sure you don’t use too much or the glue might overflow when you insert the dowelling.

Now it’s time to give your lamp some height: drill a hole for the dowelling at the bottom of the 5 cm piece of wood using the 6 mm drill bit. You can also use a drill bit stop here to ensure you don’t drill any deeper than 1.5 to 2 cm, depending on the length of your dowelling. Secure the wood with screw clamps first to help you drill more cleanly and safely.

Then you need to drill a hole at the end of the piece of wood using the 3 mm drill bit. This will be used later on to screw together the pieces of wood that form the lamp stand.

Now it’s time to tackle the longer 10 cm pieces of wood: again drill a hole into the side of each piece, at the end, for a screw. Drill an additional hole in the centre of two of the longer pieces of wood, and in the centre of one of the smaller 5 cm ones: later on, you will feed the cable for the light bulb through here.

Once you’ve prepared the various parts of your lamp, glue the short piece of wood to the lamp base. Leave it to dry for a while, then attach the remaining pieces. To do this, screw together the pieces of wood with the screws and nuts, in a zigzag shape. Put the pieces with a hole in the middle at the top of the lamp; later on, you will feed the cable for the light bulb through here. Adjust the angle of the pieces of wood according to how you want your lamp to look/how tall you want it to be. Secure the top piece of wood so that it is parallel to the lamp base.

To ensure your lamp shines brightly, you need to provide an electrical supply. To do this, feed a cable through the top three pieces of wood so that the light bulb will hang down from above at the top.

You’re almost done. Simply secure the light bulb socket firmly to the cable and screw in the light bulb. Once you’ve plugged in the cable, your new lamp will instantly brighten up any room.