Bright Find

We love auctions. There is something about hanging out all day with a bunch of random strangers and my hubby and talking about all the cool old stuff. The best part is watching what people buy and how much they spend. Zach and I don't have tons of dough to spend on stuff, but the people who do are really interesting to watch! When we go, we really ever plan don't spend more than twenty bucks. Sometimes there is something awesome and we do a little pow-wow and some calculations and bid on it. But normally if it's cool, there are other people with more money who think it's cool and we don't get it!

So, when I saw six boxes of really cool old lanterns I got excited. Buuuut, I figured we wouldn't get them. Lanterns are super trendy right now and I was sure that other people (read: grown-ups with lucrative jobs) thought they were cool too. Check out this lady's sweet Pinterest board with a ton of cool lanterns. And obviously I start having visions of backyard dinner parties that look like this sweet tree picture from Pinterest.

But my Pinteresty excitement was not for naught. The lanterns, which I spotted at about noon, didn't go up for sale until almost 4. Which meant most people had already left - sweet! They were also one of the last 20 things to be auctioned. The competition was definitely lessened. But bummer... the first three boxes went fast and for wayyy too much, like $50 a box which was about two or three lanterns. Keeping my fingers crossed, I was able to pick up the last two boxes, seven lanterns, for $14 total. Which is only $2 a piece! Sweet!

Unfortunately, all of the lanterns I got looked like this. Exactly like this. This is one of them. They were rough. In fact, before we brought them inside, the hubs found one that had some... um... remains inside of it. So we left that one in the back of the truck to be toted to the dump on our next trash run. At that point we were down to 6, but that's still pretty awesome.

 The hubby then took the caps and glass out of all six and scrubbed them down. I wouldn't touch them was busy doing other things, so I couldn't help. Then, he did some sanding to get off any chipping, rusty spots. We have an obsession at our house with the Oil Rubbed Bronze Rustoleum spray paint. As of today, we've gone through about eight cans of it. We put it on everything because it covers well, doesn't scratch and looks awesome and modern while still looking old. That didn't make sense but hopefully you get it! This is what we ended up with!

Check out that lantern! He even got the cap to sand out to it's original gold color. And the new paint looks so clean and nice. A huge improvement. Normally we try to restore things, but these lanterns were too far gone to restore, so we didn't feel too bad repainting them entirely. If you look closely, you can even see the brand names of the lanterns, which was not very visible initially.

There goal is to put these up in our porch once it's finished. Right now, they're scattered around the house looking fancy. I think they'll look great with some solar candles in them. What do you think?