Some weeks ago my wife came home from IKEA and she got me this NITTIO lamp. Quite a while I did not know where to use it until I saw some videos on Youtube of people using concrete for the base of the lamp. I wanted to give this a try.

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The first and most important thing I have learned with this project. Retry if you fail. Down below there are some photos of my first try to work with concrete and the bad outcome. But I got it done in the end.

Things I needed for this project.

Wood for the mold and some screws
Concrete (2 bags since the first one ended in the trash bin)
Lamp socket and a lamp
Silicone
Hot Glue gun
Jigsaw

Step 1: Creating the Mold

Since the bulb is relatively big I wanted to create a equally big base. I took some wood I had lying around and cut this with a jigsaw to 4 parts with the same dimensions. Initially my plan was to embed an arduino with a relay and a motion detection sensor, but after the first failure of this project and the outcome of the second try, I did not have enough space in the concrete block.

The space for the electronics was the reason why I made a second wooden box with smaller dimensions and glued it in the center of the bigger box. I used some silicone to seal the corners of the big box and let everything dry. I glued to plastic caps to the center of the inner box so that I have a hole in the concrete for the bulb socket.

Step 2: Pouring Concrete

As the silicone was dry I just mixed some concrete and poured it into the mold and waited for 1.5 days.

Step 3: Failure!

When I removed the outer box, everything went fine. But I was not able to get the inner box out of the concrete. I made several mistakes and the concrete broke on all corners.

So I assembled the outer box again and sealed the corners with silicone again for a second try.

Step 4: Start Over and Get It Done!

For the second try I used a milk carton instead of the wooden box to get some room in the middle of the concrete block. I reused the plastic caps for the hole in the center and this time everything went well. After the concrete was curing for a day I removed the wooden box and was able to remove the milk carton in the middle as well. The carton slightly bent under the pressure of the concrete and now I had enough room for the socket - but not for the arduino and the relay. So I just attached a regular wire with switch to the socket. After a bit of sanding the socket fits perfect in the hole. Time to put in the bulb and this small project was done.

Thank you for reading!