Superplasticity.

A few years ago, my mom and I saw a pair of card catalogs on ebay and we couldn't walk away. In fact, if they were to be ours, we had to drive to them since shipping was out of the question.

Both card catalogs went home with my mom, because my shared Boston apartments did not leave much room for one of these big boys. My mom's card catalog was put to work immediately, the drawers were filled with everything from silverware and scissors to markers and masking tape. My card catalog was stored in the barn, until "the great barn clean-out of 2010" that I often refer to. During its time in storage, it got wet, and the finish on top was ruined. Not a big deal at all. In fact, I have such a hard time taking that leap and painting old, wooden furniture, that this was the excuse I needed! I still had a bit of blue paint left over from painting these desk legs. After removing any final bits of varnish and sanding the top of the card catalog, I got to painting. I love the results! I'm thinking that I'll take it a step farther and paint the sides of that top piece, and maybe one day I'll get adventurous enough to paint everything but the drawers. You can see in the photos that the varnish is already chipping off in other areas. Won't it look awesome?

I've yet to fill up the drawers, right now I'm just enjoying the old labels {and thinking about ways to keep these labels, while adding new functional ones}. {WOOL! could there be a better label for a knitter?}

One idea was to keep the old labels where they are and add smaller, new labels to that smaller section on the left, where the drawer numbers are now.

Plus, how great would it be if the items I put in the drawers relate to their old labels? Like silly putty in the superplasticity drawer, because I'm always looking for a place to store my silly putty.