I bought this last weekend at a yard sale I passed on Friday. It was a tool sale, but you never know what you’re going to find, so I stopped.
Yeah. So here’s how I ended up with this. First of all, I’m a little obsessed with flat files, and this looked like a set of flat files. Only it was under a ton of things and weighs about thirty pounds, so by the time they dug it out, I was kind of honor-bound to buy it. And it would be super-awesome in a craft room, IF I can figure out how to clean it up. (BTW, I love how suspicious people get when you show interest in an item that they don’t see the value in AT ALL. The guy running the sale said, “Is there something I’m missing here? Why do you want this?” and I was tempted to tell him that the style of metalworks used to put the box together dates it back to 30 B.C.) I have this second set of flat files that I’m trying to figure out what to do with:
I’ve had these since last summer. I just don’t know what to do with them — the rust is a big problem and I’ve never re-finished anything metal before. I sent some e-mails to a few powder coating places in the area to see if that would be at all cost effective. I’ve seen a ton of people in the web who say that they take metal furniture in to their local body shop, but I have no idea if there’s any place in Chicago that does something like that. I can picture both of these painted a really bright, glossy color — I love the idea of using all vintage items in your home office or craft room for storage and both of these items would be perfect for that.
by Lara Jo
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