DIY Monday: Estate Sale Score Re-do

I subscribe to the email list of a local Estate Sale company and most weeks I faithfully check their website's "Current Sales" page to see what's coming at the weekend. I spent a good bit of last week in great anticipation of the sale last weekend. You see, not all estate sales are created equally.

Some estate sales are clean and pristine. Someone's already gone through the house and picked through. There are no piled up closets, no hidden cubby holes filled with newspaper and boxes, no spidery basements with wooden crates of stuff in these clean and pristine houses. They may have a few pieces of china and silver and crystal, but they don't necessarily speak to my treasure hunting heart.

This past weekend, however, my MIL (who is also a treasure hunter at heart) and I hit the gold standard of estate sales. It was a sale with a garage filled with boxes, trunks and crates that were, in turn, filled with everything a treasure hunter would want. It was a house with linens galore. It was a house with cubbys and closets full of stuff. A cook, a reader, a collector who had traveled - a treasure hunter's dream.

I was in the last room when I saw them. In fact, I saw a stack of them walking out the door and kicked myself for not getting there even 30 minutes earlier because the price was fantastic. But then, when digging through vintage clothing in the closet, I found them... two of them: vintage metal card catalog files.

I've been looking for a vintage set of these for years with no luck. Granted I've been looking for wooden versions, but what I've found have ranged in price from $800 to $3,000. And here in front of me was a set of 30 for $12. TWELVE DOLLARS!

After controlling my hyperventilating, I found my MIL and explained that if I left these here I'd never forgive myself (upon which she insisted we get them), we found help to get them to the car, quickly paid for them and hauled them home to try and convince my husband of their value.

Although I'm perfectly happy with the set - or would be after wiping them down a little - the hubby isn't happy with the color and insists we paint them. Since I'm not worried about the value of these babies (like I'm ever going to get rid of them), I agreed. But after nixing brown, we've settled on a blue/green... or as blue/green as I can get in a spray paint. I'll show you the steps in the next couple weeks! I'm hoping hubby will forgive me when they're done!