Junking Jackpot and Coolest Industrial Find!

I hit the jackpot yesterday! A junker/picker that lives near me has a warehouse FULL of crap! Loads of it! Stuff that people leave on the side of the road, yard sale crap, about everything you can imagine. Unfortunately, he's selling almost everything because the landlord is forcing him to move out. They're moving the warehouse to a different location and in its place they're putting in a parking lot for a new bar they're building nearby. There are TONS of bars in this area, not sure why they need yet ANOTHER one. And of course, once the parking lot is completed they'll make you pay for parking. Lame! I felt pretty bad for the guy so I didn't try to haggle with his already good prices. But because of him, I can now claim that I have the BEST industrial find of the year. But that can wait until the end of the post, first I'll show my other neat finds.

A colorful vintage metal suitcase, an antique hardware box, and a really nice side or coffee table with muscle-y legs. It needs some tightening and gluing where the legs meet the table, but that won't take long to fix. The school desk was a previous estate sale find in case you're wondering.

Now for the close-ups. The red and light blue slightly rusty suitcase is lined with a light red and white fabric inside. I forgot to take a picture of the inside, but I'll share one once I've cleaned it up a little. The guy who sold it to me said it had roller skates in it when he found it. Not sure if it was meant to be a storage box for skates, but who cares! It looks neat to me!

The hardware box with the company name stamped on the side still has its top and opens and closes without a problem. It needs a little dusting, but otherwise it's in great shape.

The coffee/side table has great details and a nice little drawer with cute brass knobs. I love that it has chunky feet, but the spindly part in between has a few thick areas of wax and glue on it (looks like there were a couple cracks that had to be repaired in the past). I'm going to refinish and restain the top and I'd like to do the same for the rest of the table, but we'll see how difficult it is to sand everything off. I may have to resort to painting it because of the previous repairs. And these pictures were taken sideways, so ignore the horizontal trees in the background.

And now for the amazing ALL TIME COOLEST industrial find of the year! A large 10 bushel vintage Dandux canvas cart with wood and steel frame (the vintage Raleigh bike next to it is my husband's).

Do you know they're selling smaller versions of these Dandux carts RIGHT now at Restoration Hardware for $129-229? And yeah the RH ones have a cute little pocket and a divider in the middle, but this is vintage! Only warehouses use these big guys. I'd really like to keep the cart for my future laundry room or as storage in my bedroom, but it may just be too good to keep if you know what I mean. It may be the reason I move into a booth at Grace Hart. It looks like they have a space opening up soon and the owner has mentioned that it might be a good idea to have me move into it. I don't know if I will have enough inventory to fill it or replenish it, but we shall see.

For now, I'm going to leave you with an amusing picture of the mail we received today. Guess which piece of mail is mine???

If you guessed Men's Fitness, I don't think we can be friends.

Linking to: