Keeping Busy

I've had a cold for the last week and have had to cancel all sorts of singing commitments but I am keeping busy with some tedious quilting and a job in my garage that has been hanging over my head for the last 40 years or so.

Surrey scrounged one of the museum cabinets when the old herbarium was demolished. Since then we have labelled the drawers 'temporarily'  with any sort of tape we could write on. A year or so ago Geoff found some lovely 'antique' label holders online so bought enough to do all the drawers.

This week I started the job. On the left is the first column of drawers done and on the right is the next column in its messy state.

It has now taken me a week but the drawers are all cleaned down of all the old labels and oiled. Then I attached the label holders using a template to mark the hole spaces. I created a table that produced labels of exactly the right size for the label holders and printed them on cream cardboard and voila..

It is a pity that the original handles are not all the same size and are not all aligned correctly but I am pleased with the job and they look so neat.

The timber is Sequoia (Californian Redwood) and when the drawers were made in about 1900 the trees used for the timber would have been possibly 100 years old.

If eventually they are used anywhere other than my garage they could do with a good re-strip and oiling but for now they are great.