@Miss Nancy,

Not sure why it turned out so dark in the first one.  Do you have the ability to increase the gamma on the texture in your materials?  If you open the diffuse map in Photoshop or similar, you will see that it is indeed a dark black color, with some worn edges which are lighter.  It shouldn't render jet black, as in my preview examples using the same maps provided, but different engines handle color maps differently, and some may require color correction of the map (gamma, exposure, etc) either internally, or in an image editor.

I like both of your renders, but the second one is really good, even without the diffuse map.  You can always just use any procedural material, so long as it's seamless, in place of the textures I provided.  Great work!

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