vintage card catalog!

My dad is a big garage-saler/antiquer/&c, so he sometimes picks up cool stuff for me instead of things to resell. Or I claim them before he can post them to ebay. Either way, I end up with some pretty awesome stuff.

His latest find is this adorable card catalog, made by Globe and with a patent of 1900. It's over a hundred years old, but has held up pretty well! All the drawers were present, and all but one still had the locking filing system inside. And he got it for only 4$. :D

I took out the filing system though, because I wanted to use this for storage. I cleaned all the drawers very gently (but thoroughly) and carefully unscrewed the mechanism. I made sure to save the parts for later, in case I ever want to sell it or revert it back to its original condition.

Then I had my dad cut mat-board to size to line the drawers, and voila! it was ready for me to stuff all my knitting, crocheting, sewing, and other fiber arts things into.

I am quite happy with this unexpected furniture edition to my apartment, and plan to use it as a side table for my reading chair. Since my dream is to one day live in a library, this seems like a pretty great step forward.