craigslist rescue

i love craigslist. from the 'best of' to the apartments to the free stuff to the unique antique finds, i love it all. i'm even occasionally entertained by the scams. i mean really - nigerian missionaries, wire me the money, and then i'll send you the keys to an apartment you won't get to see - entertaining, so long as you are able to distinguish scam from truth. but i digress.

i like to look through craigslist and plot how i would rescue a piece of furniture. right now i don't have room to bring any more furniture into the house (i just got rid of 200 books and they're still overflowing). but someday....someday there will be an extra room for furniture rescues. maybe i'll even sell them. maybe i'll love them too much to give them away. maybe i'll put them back on craigslist. who knows. in the meantime i'll rescue them in my head and on my blog.

today i found this sad looking brass lamp:

there's no reason to throw this away, and no reason to not give it a little tlc. a very wise woman (love you mom) always reminds me that there's nothing a coat of paint can't do. (same woman who reminds me that it's just paint, you can always do it over, and it's just hair it will grow.)

for this lamp, i would scrub it clean and use this shade of ivory for the pole:

i would use this shade from anthropologie to finish it off: 

the other piece i found today that i really, really, REALLY want to rescue (pleaseeeee mom???) is this:

i would (after cleaning, sanding, priming) use a gray/purple color like this one (which ties in nicely to with the lamp shade):

i would also consider distressing the paint once it's dried. for the hardware, i would use something similar to these drawer pulls from anthro:

and it would all be seriously fabulous.

how would you rescue these pieces from craigslist?