"The Office" Replica Lamp

I'm a huuuge Office fan, and also a hobbyist woodworker, so I thought this lamp would be fun to make.

I've got other furniture projects and stuff on my channel, check it out!

The hardest part of this project was trying to figure out the dimensions of the lamp from screen caps. I think I got pretty close. Everything is in inches. The thickness of the lamp is 1.5 inches (because I used 2x6s).

I started by ripping some old 2x6s down to the widths shown in the diagram, using a table saw. You can use any wood you want, really. I used pine, but I'd recommend against it. It really is a terrible wood to work with when you're going for right angles, symmetry, etc.

I then used a miter saw to cut pieces to the lengths shown in the diagram.

I started with the top and bottom pieces.

Then I cut the middle pieces and figured out where to place them for even spacing.

Finally, I cut the middle vertical pieces. To hide the wire, I needed to cut a "tunnel" through all the middle pieces.

I drilled out the tunnel with a 1/4" drill bit at the drill press, making sure to get as close as I could to the center of each piece so that all the holes would line up when the lamp was assembled.

My drill press didn't have the travel to bore all the way through the pieces, so I finished each hole with a hand drill.

I then did the same thing to the top and bottom pieces.

I cut some spacers to help keep the middle pieces centered and then used regular yellow wood glue and clamps to glue everything together. These are just glued butt joints, and they're not very strong. If you're concerned about strength, I would recommend reinforcing each joint with dowels or some other kind of joinery. I don't plan on this lamp taking any kind of abuse, so I was fine with butt joints.

For the lamp base, I got this aluminum stock at my local metal supply place. I marked and cut it to the dimensions from the diagram above.

The nice thing about aluminum is that it's non-ferrous, so you can cut it with regular woodworking tools/blades. Just go slow, and make sure your blade doesn't get too hot, or it will dull quickly.

To give the aluminum a brushed look and take out scratches, I sanded it with 80, 150, and 220 grit sandpaper in an orbital sander, just like you would with wood.

There appeared to be a space piece of aluminum between the base and the wooden frame. That's what I'm cutting here. Again, the dimensions are depicted up above. I couldn't find a piece of the correct width at the metal supply place, so I had to rip it down at the table saw.

I used the wooden space piece from the bottom of the lamp to mark the proper length of the metal spacer piece (they are exactly the same dimensions, from what I could tell).

Then I used the miter saw again to cut the piece to length.

Now that I didn't need the wooden spacer to reference anymore, I glued it to the bottom of the lamp.

I also glued the top piece of the lamp in place. This piece also has a 1/4" hole in it and is where the threaded rod for the bulb fixture will thread into.

I clamped the base and the metal spacer piece together and drilled (4) 1/8" holes through them both. This is how I attached the base to the wooden frame-- I drilled screws up through the bottom of the base into the frame.

I counter-sunk the holes with a step-bit so that the screws would not protrude lower than the bottom of the base.

To access the "tunnel" I'd drilled for the wire, I drilled into the back of the frame towards the bottom. This is where the wire/plug will come out of the lamp.

I sanded the frame with 80, 150, and 220 grit sandpaper.

I stained the frame with the closest color-match stain I could find, then applied wipe-on polyurethane. This color is Minwax - Sedona Red. It's a little too red... maybe mixing it with a brown stain would have been a better match.

I then fed the wire into the back of the frame and up out of the top. I used one of those lamp kits from Lowe's... I think they're like $10.

I threaded the rod into the top of the lamp. Pine is soft enough that the rod just kind of threaded itself in there. You could epoxy it in for more strength if you want.

I drilled pilot holes for where the base will attach...

Then I hand-screwed in the wood screws to attach the base.

I wired in the bulb socket thing... The cliffnotes on that is that the hot wire goes to the gold/bronze-colored screw and the other wire goes to the silver-colored screw. The hot wire is the one with the voltage and stuff printed on it.

I ended up having to trim the threaded rod and change the hardware for the lamp shade. The way it was in this picture resulted in the lamp shade being too high, and it looked weird.

Just had to add the shade, and that's it! I got the shade at Lowe's, as well. It's a bit smaller than the one used on set... This one is a "medium" size, but the one from the show appears to be bigger/wider than that.

Hope this was interesting/helpful. Adios!