Comments (74)

1. We were in the middle of remodeling our basement when 9/11 happened. About 10 days later, we were finished and moving back boxes into the new storage space. One of the boxes was filled with brochures / souvenirs / mementos from when I traveled a fair bit in my youth. I hadn’t even looked in the box for about 12 years. My husband was moving this box when one piece of paper fell out of the bottom. He came running upstairs and said “you won’t believe what just fell out the box I was moving”. It was my brochure from visiting the observation deck at the World Trade Centre. What was even eerier was the caption on the brochure read “The Closest Some of Us Will Get to Heaven”. Gave us the goosebumps, I tell ya’.

   posted by Sheila on 11-9-2007 at 10:13 am

2. Not a “remodel” per se, but…In 1987 I was living in Hollister, CA, which was hit pretty bad by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. A grand old Victorian-style home near my house was heavily damaged during the quake, including a few walls that were cracked and dislodged. Behind one wall they found photos of the extensive earthquake damage Hollister experienced in 1906!

   posted by MacGilroy on 11-9-2007 at 10:15 am

3. I moved going into 6th grade and (well, this isn’t really remodeling, but maybe for a 6th grader) there was a “The Walls” poster in my closet. I think that’s the band name… it was one of those velvet ones that you color in with neon colors. In my 6th grade version of remodeling I took it down, only to find an epic love note written on the wall from some girl to some guy. We only lived there for 10 months, but I remember thinking it was pretty cool.

   And Sheila, that gave me the shivers. What a find.

   posted by Kelly J. on 11-9-2007 at 10:17 am

4. I think that’s supposed to be sweat coming off the turtle from running so fast, not tears. :]

   posted by Melinda on 11-9-2007 at 10:21 am

5. We added on a new room in our old home a few years back, and found a trashbag full of empty beer cans sealed in the wall.

   posted by Jason! on 11-9-2007 at 10:31 am

6. We dug a new basement in my parents house a few years ago and under our living room was approximately 50 old tobacco tins of varying shapes and brands, but most prominently was “George Washington” brand tobacco.

   posted by Laura on 11-9-2007 at 10:39 am

7. We recently ripped wallpaper off of the walls of our bedroom. The house was built in 1928, so you never quite know what you’ll get. On the original plaster are a bunch of pencil drawings. I can just picture a parent telling their kids to go to town because they’re just going to cover it up. There’s a number of cowboys and horses, so we’re guessing they originate from the 40s or 50s.

   posted by Jaime on 11-9-2007 at 10:51 am

8. Sheetrockers love to refill soda bottles (using their post-kidney filtrate solution) and seal them up inside the walls. It is so prevalent that some construction contracts stipulate that the sheetrocking must be directly supervised and the hollow walls must be photographed just before the sheetrock is hung as proof that there are no ‘Easter Eggs’ hidden inside.

   posted by n2y2 on 11-9-2007 at 11:05 am

9. My wife and I left a few trinkets and note inside a wall when we did a remodel. It is long odds that the cache will ever be found, but it was fun to do it.

   posted by n2y2 on 11-9-2007 at 11:07 am

10. When my parents remodeled their laundry room, updating the electric, pipes and some other stuff, they found a full set of blueprints for the house behind the plaster and lathe, dating back to 1911, when the house was built. In addition, clipped to the blueprints, was a letter from the architect to the builder, describing the requirements for the house. It was wonderful, since it gave us insight into who built the house and why. The local mill-owner built the house as a summer “cottage” for his mother. It was a really cool find, since before that, we only knew that we were the oldest house on the street, and also the largest.

    posted by Jenny on 11-9-2007 at 11:13 am

11. Unfortunately, while remodeling the basement in a home my parents had just purchased, we found a 60′s or 70′s era dildo complete with a wire that lead to a heavily corroded battery pack. It was great fun to watch my mom act her way through pretending she had no clue what it was.

    posted by Phunk on 11-9-2007 at 11:16 am

12. One of the local fraternities had their house condemned and they were ordered to completely gut and restore it. During the process, they discovered that no real insulation had been used in the making of the house, but instead they had uses newspapers and advertisements. They were fairly well preserved considering they were put in during 1911-1913. Most of them ended up donated to the university library, although a few rare magazines were auctioned off to help defray the cost of the restoration.

    It’s sort of like a time capsule.

    posted by Cathy on 11-9-2007 at 11:23 am

13. Last year I was remodeling my downstairs bathroom, and found a woman’s old, worn 14k gold wedding band under the old vanity, with about an inch of dust covering it. It was a neat find, and I immediately took it upstairs to my girlfriend. She put it on, and it fit perfectly.

    The odd part of the story is that the next week I was scheduled to go engagement ring shopping, and I didn’t know her size for the ring. I took that one with me, and the jeweler matched the size.

    It worked out, and we still have that old ring. She put it in a scrap book.

    posted by Nick on 11-9-2007 at 11:41 am

14. There was an article in the local paper last month about this. A remodel was going on at a shop downtown, converting it into a pita shop. When they removed the sheet-rock, they discovered murals painted on the walls. Really great murals from the 1950s.

    It turned out that the shop had, in the 50s and early 60s, been a popular soda shop, and a major hang-out for local high schoolers. The murals were great, showing the soda shop, the town, kids, and the school.

    The newspaper had a second article a week later, where they talked to people who used to hang out there, and they also found the artist, who was amazed to find the murals still intact. It was a really cool find.

    No idea if the pita shop kept the murals…

    posted by Jen on 11-9-2007 at 11:46 am

15. Back when I actually owned a home we found 1800′s beer bottles, a melted fireplace grate (from the SF earthquake) and a mummified cat. The beer bottles and the grate ended up on display in the living room and the cat got a decent burial.

    But the best thing we found was a really cheesy porno book sealed in a wall — quite apt, really, considering what I write.

    posted by M.Christian on 11-9-2007 at 11:50 am

16. My ex-girlfriend’s sister bought a new house about five years ago. They were buying it from a local church whose recently deceased pastor had owned the house. About a year goes by, and the two decide to install a DirecTV dish on the roof. When her husband was in the eaves of the house drilling for the mounting bracket, he found a small paper bag. Upon opening it, he found $5,000. Apparently, the pastor had died before telling anyone about the money. Figuring that the church already made a gigantic profit on the sale of the house (which they did), they didn’t tell anyone about the money that they had found. Well. . . no one except immediate family. The money did go to good use . . . they were able to start an addition to the house, so I guess (in essence) the money never left.

    posted by Firebrand on 11-9-2007 at 12:05 pm

17. During a gut rehab of an 1880s brownstone we found: several aluminum wrapped spoons stashed by a junkie between a ground floor bathroom floor and the cellar ceiing below, lots of coal from the original heating system (fireplaces) and a stamped tin toy car from the 20s.

    posted by Peter on 11-9-2007 at 12:38 pm

18. We were remodeling the downstairs bathroom of our new house and upon removing the old sink cabinet we found a porn magazine from the early 80′s being used to make sure the cabinet wasn’t rocking back and forth. Ick.

    posted by Elisabeth on 11-9-2007 at 12:38 pm

19. Cool timing – my wife and I, along with my parents, just helped do some minor remodeling to her parents’ house a couple of weeks ago. When we started chipping our way down through a concrete-block wall, we found that every cavity inside the blocks was full of ‘trash’ from when the house was built – which was in the late 30′s. There were wax-paper bread wrappers from companies our parents didn’t recall, bottle caps lined with cork, and a fairly well-preserved very early 7-Up bottle. Of most interest to me as a historian, though, were the multiple wads of newspaper stuffed around the window and door frames in lieu of insulation. I’m still picking my way through the fragments.

    posted by Roger on 11-9-2007 at 1:07 pm

20. When remodeling a kitchen at an old rental house my parents owned, we found an old perfume sprayer (the kind with a bulb) in the wall. It was a green glass bottle and still had lots of perfume in it.

    posted by JS on 11-9-2007 at 1:31 pm

21. It makes you wonder how all this stuff got behind the walls…

    Using newspaper as insulation seems to have been normal practice in the early 20th century. When we replaced our roof and reinsulated the attic crawlspace, we found a ton of newspapers from the 1940s being used as a vapor barrier. I enjoyed reading the old funnies.

    posted by zantimisfit on 11-9-2007 at 1:49 pm

22. My boyfriends dad does renovations for people – most commonly he finds guns, but he has found everything from trash to ladies underwear to old bottles and the guns

    posted by Janet on 11-9-2007 at 1:50 pm

23. My father in law, Jim, had just moved into his house when the man he’d purchased it from showed up some two months later asking how things were going. The two went to the kitchen as the man asked if Jim minded sharing some water. When in the kitchen, Jim noticed the man acting squirly, and saw him out of the corner of his eye bend over and get into the dead space under the lazy susan. Promptly, the man walked and said, “You know, my wife is waiting in the car and I really shouldn’t impose.” As the stange acting man walked out, my father in law saw him stuffing a large wad of cash into his pants! Jim checked under the lazy susan and found an empty jar–of course that cash was legally my father in laws, but is kind hearted and never pursued any action.

    posted by pc on 11-9-2007 at 2:04 pm

24. My brother and uncle were doing construction on a bathroom and as they were taking down a wall they both spotted a jewelry box sitting in a nook they exposed. They both dashed for it at the same time, almost knocking each other over. My uncle got there first and opened it to find … a glass eyeball! My brother was like, “it’s all yours!”

    I found $500 in a coffee can a wood-burning kitchen stove that was being taken out of my mom’s house (she’d just bought the house, which had sat vacant for years). I found it just as the scrap man was taking it away and he was mad that I found it before he did, but I kept it and threw myself a birthday party.

    posted by Mary on 11-9-2007 at 2:54 pm

25. My mother got tired of the green shag carpet that was all over the house we had just moved into and decided to tear it up. She found hardwood floors underneath, and went to town ripping up the carpet all over the house.

    posted by tycho on 11-9-2007 at 2:56 pm

26. We remodeled our kitchen last year, and while we didn’t find much — a couple of old photos of previous owners’ kids from the ’60′s and a few other odds & ends — we did leave behind our own time capsule inside the wall above a door frame. Maybe some future remodel will unearth it; maybe not. But my kids had a great time putting it together, and I’m sure they’ll be back to the house when they’re grown to see if it has been found.

    The first house my wife & I bought had been owned previously by the grandmother of a good friend of ours. This friend told us of his weird uncle Willard, who also lived in the house, and his odd habits of hoarding anything and everything. Rather than hiring a trash collection service, Willard would burn and bury the trash in the back yard. We found lots of evidence of that. But Willard was also prone to lose money; we had hoped to find some of that during a couple of remodeling projects, but came up empty. The anticipation did make the jobs more interesting though.

    posted by Dave on 11-9-2007 at 2:58 pm

27. Around 1953 a master bedroom was added above our existing lean-to kitchen. In the 10 inch space between the old kitchen roof and the bedroom floor, my husband found a human ponytail. I guess someone got hot while remodeling and decided to cut his/her hair? We left it there just in case of Voodoo/hex/ghostly return.

    posted by Andiscandis on 11-9-2007 at 2:59 pm

28. A few years ago, we remodeled the kitchen in our home which was built in 1900. Knowing the job would surpass our skills, we hired a contractor to help us out.

    On the first day of the job, my wife called to report that when they were removing the floors, they had found a large pipe in the corner of the kitchen, at the top of the basement stairs. It was a toilet line. At some point in the home’s history, an owner decided they no longer needed the convenience of toilet in the kitchen (at the top of the basement stairs), so they removed the toilet and filled the pipe with cement.

    That little discovery added some unexpected time and expense onto the job, but the mental images were worth it.

    posted by Feiter on 11-9-2007 at 4:32 pm

29. The two elderly queens that owned are home were heavy smokers. Hence way too many cigarette butts in the corners of the carpet…

    posted by james on 11-9-2007 at 8:12 pm

30. We used to actually leave messages in a remodel. I was living in a fraternity house (Sigma Nu Unvi of Missouri) and the unwritten rule was that you had to sign or leave some kind of message on any remodeling you did. New paneling was signed and then dated. Then many years later when new paneling would/will go up the old paneling is found signed>>>a link to the past. Pictures, letters, messages etc were left behind walls, under carpeting and behind bedframes.

    posted by dr howard on 11-9-2007 at 8:31 pm

31. Autopsy table in the overgrown backyard. Creepy.

    posted by ellen on 11-9-2007 at 10:16 pm

32. A moonshine in a gallon Coca Cola syrup jug. So old, the winos wouldn’t even touch it >

    posted by Renee on 11-10-2007 at 2:44 am

33. Wow, I really botched that one up. You get the point, but we also found a newspaper ad that had been clipped from the 40′s where you could send in for a free bra. The latest technology in comfort, I guess.

    posted by Renee on 11-10-2007 at 2:51 am

34. At my old boarding school (Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills Michigan)It was a tradition for the dorm girls to sign one of the desk drawers in the art deco inspired furniture in our room (the designer was Eero Saarenin.)I signed the drawer but I also found the signatures of former female students written on the grout in between the tiles in the bathroom. The oldest one had a date from 1954.

    posted by Kelly P on 11-10-2007 at 8:45 am

35. Done many a remodel but the most recent find was an article about 4 guys in my hometown who went to Cuba to fish in 1959 and ended up staying in a cabin and going fishing with Castro and his bodyguards for 2 days. Pictures and everything.

    posted by Connie on 11-10-2007 at 9:42 pm

36. # Renee Says:
    November 10th, 2007 at 2:44 am

    A moonshine in a gallon Coca Cola syrup jug. So old, the winos wouldn’t even touch it >

    I don’t know why because just like a fine
    1 or 2 or more? hundred year old wine a good moonshine would be good for
    many, many many, many years.

    posted by rummy on 11-10-2007 at 11:46 pm

37. while remodeling my laundry room, I found a door behind the wall. For a brief moment I considered that it might be a door to another dimension, a better place perhaps. However, upon inspection I found that it was an old exterior door that no longer opened to the out of doors.

    posted by Brad on 11-11-2007 at 7:19 am

38. In my previous life as a renovations contractor we found lots of stuff in walls, above ceilings, under old flooring, etc. Old newspapers are fun to look through – 10 cents for big juicy steaks! – furnished 3-bedroom apartments to rent for $20 per month! – Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah – 25 cents!

    The most unusual find? We were converting an old funeral parlour to apartments back in 1984 or ’85. It was a stately old home but we had to remove a lot of interior walls and ceilings to upgrade the wiring and plumbing and install fire-rated separations. Two of my workers were down in the basement where the “body work” took place pulling down an old fibreboard ceiling when I heard a good deal of cussing and the sound of breaking glass. Hundreds of empty embalming fluid bottles had cascaded down on them! There were all shapes and sizes of bottles, some not much bigger than those mini-bar liquor bottles, others more like small mickeys. The funeral folks must have just tossed them up between the ceiling joist near their workbench. This was before the days of bottle recycling!

    I always wondered how much fluid the average stiff required; surely they could have bought this stuff in 5-gallon drums!

    posted by silk purse on 11-12-2007 at 3:24 pm

39. Hey folks-
    This thread is right up my alley-I’m a guy who collects old beer cans & bottles!If any of you found the ones that took an opener to drink from (like a HI-C drink can) or that had a spout type top-drop me an email.Maybe I can cover some of the remodeling costs!

    oldbeer at gmail dot com

    posted by Barry the beerman on 11-13-2007 at 1:34 pm

40. an autopsy table?? omg.
    in the BACK YARD?

    so was it like supposed to be a kid’s playground toy? for the munsters? cause that’s what i’m picturing.

    oh, and i’ve always had a habit since i frist moved at age 5 of signing my name on the very top of my door (the part you can’t see unless you’re ginormous). i’ve done it in every place i’ve lived (dorms, etc) and in some places i’ve visited. i always like seeing that someone else has already done the same thing. neat.

    posted by amywithlemon on 11-14-2007 at 9:58 am

41. While remodeling our kitchen, which was in an add-on area of our 1763 home, we discovered the date “July 6 1811″ hand-written in chalk on one of the beams. That same room had a huge floor-to-ceiling hutch built in that was built sometime in the 1940s. After cutting a hole in the back wall of the hutch and shining a flashlight inside, we found the original cook fireplace with oven and wood storage sections. After extensive research we found that our home had changed from a private residence to an inn and tavern in the early 1800s, complete with a domed-ceiling ballroom (my bedroom now) and a separate adjoining room where a small orchestra would play. We have found a number of other really cool stuff here through the years, and researching the house’s history has been an exciting pastime.

    posted by GTOJudy on 11-14-2007 at 10:22 am

42. In the post-fire reconstruction of our 130 year old house we found a young girls low-heeled boot (from the era when that was likely her only or primary pair of shoes) and a lower leg brace with shoe attached, belonging to a young lady or petite woman, such as a sufferer of polio might wear.

    What we didn’t find were any newspapers, which my mother makes dead sure to stick into the wall during every renovation ever since finding one left behind by a previous home-owner.

    posted by Mary Kroll on 11-14-2007 at 1:16 pm

43. I sure would like to know the stories behind some of these items! When tearing down an old porch on my brother’s house we found a pair of dentures and an old bottle of vermifuge, (worm medicine). Now why would someone leave thier dentures in a wall?

    posted by Dixie on 11-14-2007 at 1:34 pm

44. My dad and brothers have a construction company. In remodeling a downtown office space for a lawyer and his family (they were putting an apartment on the third floor for them) they found where the upper level had been a brothel in the early days of the town. Several of the women left diaries and tickets to various local attractions not to mention used and unused condoms. They got a kick out of reading the diaries.

    posted by Peggy on 11-14-2007 at 3:27 pm

45. When we moved into our current house, we our contractor pull up the rug in the family room, since it needed to be replaced. Underneath, he found a bank book with an $80,000 balance showing, in the name of the wife of the previous owner. She called at one point to see if she could get something she’d left behind, and was very anxious to get the bankbook back. I have to wonder if it’s money her husband didn’t know about.

    posted by Michele on 11-14-2007 at 3:47 pm

46. While replacing the furnace in their 1880s farmhouse, a couple my husband and I know found a burlap sack crammed into the corner of the cold air return of the furnace they were removing. Upon opening the sack, they were dumbfounded to discover almost $11,000.00! The bills were all very old and stained. I do not recall what the most current date on them was but I do remember her saying that there wasn’t any bill larger than a $20.00 in the bag. Needless to say, that bit of good luck paid for the furnace replacement and several other “honey-do” projects they had been putting off.

    posted by Kim on 11-14-2007 at 3:47 pm

47. My great-grandfather was a Chicago cop. His father had received a parcel of land in northwoods Wisconsin upon his exit from the cavalry. So whenever Great-Grandpa Joe saw a building being torn down, he would salvage whatever he could and drive it up to the land on a trailer made from the frame of a Model T. He built a little red tar-shingled cabin out of it. The chimney in one room says “August 1939″. Over the years, people have lived there infrequently and vacationed there often, but it’s not well insulated or well secured. Mice and spiders and the like tend to get in.

    When we went up to stay this summer, we noticed that some sort of creature had chewed a hole in the bathroom ceiling. My dad went into the attic (crammed with garbage, old Christmas decorations, chewed-up newspapers, a WWI doughboy helmet, and about five million other things) and tried to find (a) where the creatures had gotten in and (b) where they had made their nest. He ripped up a floorboard and those of us down in the rest of the cabin heard an ecstatic shout of “Oh, my GOD! Dad’s guns weren’t stolen after all!”

    It turns out that my grandfather, who died before I was born, had stashed his gun collection under the attic floorboards for safekeeping, and hadn’t told anyone where they were. My dad, who hadn’t been able to find them, had always assumed that they’d been stolen. After we realized what was going on, my two brothers went up and started helping him tear up the floor; overall, they found all or part of 11 different guns, including a pre-WWI-era Colt.

    My brother and my dad also found an old leather shoe when replacing the kitchen floor at the cabin. They were worried at first that they’d find a foot inside it…luckily, there was nothing except the shoe.

    posted by Michaela on 11-14-2007 at 4:29 pm

48. dentures…in a purse.

    posted by i. turk on 11-14-2007 at 5:01 pm

49. Once when remodeling a bathroom, I found a chalk message under the old sheet rock: “What the hell are you looking up here for?” And when I removed a wall between my kitchen and dining room there were hundreds of snail shells. Rats had raided the garden for snails, brought them back to their nests, eaten them, and discarded the shells! It was gross and I made sure the walls were sealed to the outdoors!

    posted by Kathleen on 11-14-2007 at 7:35 pm

50. I am shocked that no-one has put this down! Just recently (the 1st of November) a couple in South Carolina moved a bookcase to find a secret moldy room. Inside was a note that said, among other things, “You Found It!”

    posted by Christine on 11-15-2007 at 7:20 am

51. Not quite remodeling, but…

    My grandfather was quite the pack rat, and after he passed my family was left with the intimidating task of cleaning out the basement of his home. In addition to a multitude of parts for vehicles that had been out of production for years there was a baby blue cardboard box for “Kraft Tasty Loaf”, the original name for Velveeta! We also found a box of generic labeled cans “BEER”.

    posted by James on 11-16-2007 at 5:34 pm

52. I was taking the godawful paneling off of my bedroom wall and found 3 different wallpaper patterns, the final layer being a disturbing turquoise color. It was printed with dark red fawns wearing little silver floral wreaths on their freaky little heads. I keep looking for the pictures I took of it. I can’t adequately describe the creepiness.

    posted by Katie on 11-16-2007 at 9:08 pm

53. No cash, but my parents did find a bible and small childs shoe in their walls, an old farmhouse built in the mid 1800′s. The most interesting find was the live wires where someone removed an outlet or switch, stuffed the box with newspaper, then wallpapered over it.

    posted by Jack on 11-16-2007 at 11:28 pm

54. My family moved to an old, pre-revolutionary war stone house when I was in 6th grade. We didn’t find much in the house, but we discovered that a previous owner had used headstones as pavers in the old stable/garage.

    posted by Dianna on 11-16-2007 at 11:58 pm

55. A few years back, I helped my girlfriend’s uncle remodel their old country house. Upon ripping up the linoleum in the kitchen floor, we found several mreo layers; it was interesting to see the designs from different time periods. When we got to the bottom layer, we found several old stamps and milk bottle tops that dated from the 20s and 30s.

    posted by Rodger on 11-17-2007 at 3:16 pm

56. While we were cutting a hole in the floor of a small house that was built in 1900 (we were adding a master bathroom), we inadvertently cut through a newspaper that some industrious person has used as padding under the hardwood floor. What was interesting was was on the newpaper. There was a picture of Hitler’s WWI army- complete with covered wagons. This same bit of paper also had quotes from “sex symbol” Bob Hope. In the attic, we found an autographed picture of “benchwarmer” Bob Lursema.

    posted by James on 11-19-2007 at 12:51 pm

57. Warning… this is a bit morbid.

    A renovator in Toronto found the mummified remains of a newborn. They named him Kintyre after the street the house was on. Personally, I think I’d rather find bottles or newspapers.

    Go to CBC.CA and search for kintyre for more details.

    posted by Dave on 11-19-2007 at 9:41 pm

58. What timing that I found this. I’m in the middle of a small project that involves closing off a very small section of my kitchen. I’ve been debating what to put in the soon to be sealed mini-vault. I’ve already collected all the local newspapers and now I have a few more ideas of things to hide back there. Nothing as morbid as some of these find, fortunately.

    posted by kristopher on 11-20-2007 at 3:41 pm

59. When we were restoring a 250 year old tavern/farmhouse, I found a newspaper from the 1800′s rolled into the window between the jamb and studs. It described the funeral trip for John Adams from Philly to Mass. We had it framed and gave it to the owners.

    posted by John K on 12-5-2007 at 8:54 am

60. We were remodeling our kitchen and in the process extending a gas line from the furnace to the kitchen. The contractor’s helper, it turned out, had grown up in the house, and found an old scooter underneath the crawlspace that had been his as a child. This man was probably 60 years old, so you can imagine his delight. I gave him the scooter.

    posted by Julie on 12-5-2007 at 9:30 am

61. My husband and I are in the middle of closing in the garage to make a theater room. In one of the walls, he found an old Yoohoo bottle cap, with a price sticker on it that read 69 cents. We’ve also found that the house is NOT built well at all. Nothing is level, and over one of the doors the space changes an inch from one side of the door to the other.

    We also have a friend who used to do construction, and he was telling us about a house he worked on, where behind the drywall, in every space, there is an empty beer bottle. And every 5th space, there’s a root beer bottle instead.

    posted by Shawn on 12-5-2007 at 9:39 am

62. When my friend’s grandfather passed away she and her family started moving everything out of the house so they could sell it. when they were carrying her grandfather’s mattress outside my friend’s hand accidentally slipped into a hole that had been ripped in the side. when she pulled her hand out a wad of cash came with it. when they had finished emptying the mattress there was about $1800 dollars total. turns out her grandfather had a deep seated distrust for banks.

    posted by erin on 12-5-2007 at 9:40 am

63. When I was a teen in the 80′s we were remodeling the bathroom of our 1960′s era house. The remains of the workmans lunch- apparently he had a kaiser roll sandwich wrapped in waxed paper, and left it in the wall. The bugs had bored in and ate the food, but the paper was intact, in the shape of the roll. It was cool. We also found tons of old razor blades. I guess in the old days, the medicine cabinets had a slot for youto put the blades into so you wouldn’t get hurt. But the slot just led to the hollow spaces in the wall. duh.

    posted by QT314159265 on 12-5-2007 at 9:54 am

64. and also… after hurricane katrina a lot of charity groups have been coming down to new orleans to gut houses in the ninth ward and there have been several instances of people finding money that had been stashed away by elderly home owners. apparently it was a common practice back in the day. One case sticks out in my mind of a college kid who found thousands of dollars stashed in various bags and boxes in the closet of a house he was gutting. the kid then tracked down the owner and gave the old man his money back. sweet kid.

    posted by erin on 12-5-2007 at 10:01 am

65. Maybe that’s just how Toby sweats? Do turtles sweat?

    posted by Will on 12-5-2007 at 10:41 am

66. This year my wife and I had a house built. During the construction process, we carved our names into one of the wall studs before the sheet rock process began. It was pretty romantic, and our names will forever be written in our house.

    posted by Manuel on 12-5-2007 at 10:53 am

67. My mother worked for an old codger who owned a large car dealership back in the early 70s. He was always drunk and had a large red nose but no one ever saw him drinking. When the building was torn down, imagine everyone’s surprise when the walls around this guy’s office rained empty whiskey bottles behind them!

    posted by gayle on 12-5-2007 at 11:24 am

68. If you want to read an interesting tale of what can be found while remodeling, look into the Hartford Courant website or even google and enter Dr. Reardon, St. Francis Hospital and West Hartford CT.

    You cant hide things forever.

    posted by Pootchka on 12-5-2007 at 5:52 pm

69. The crew who leveled my 1914 cottage found a pig skill under the living room floor. In a current remodel, I found a floral apron used to chink a drafty corner, also, beer cans in the wall.

    posted by Dazie on 12-5-2007 at 7:28 pm

70. While tearing out the walls of our recently bought 1929 house, we found 3 bird skeletons, 4 squirrel nests and an almost perfect squirrel skeleton in the walls.

    posted by Lin Haraway on 12-5-2007 at 10:10 pm

71. while tearing out our super-ugly kitchen cabinets, we found a note tucked above them that read “you should’ve seen the place ‘before’ we remodeled it”.
    also, after we had the new countertop installed, but before it was sealed up against the wall, my just-taken passport photo fell behind it. it can’t be retrieved without removing the countertop and cabinets. so the next people to remodel our kitchen will at least know what i look like!

    posted by nancy on 12-6-2007 at 11:58 am

72. We bought a 1900-built home from a lady who’d lived it in for almost half a century. It has lots quirks, like “hilly’ living room floor, linoleum over carpet, and in our clean-up and reno, we’ve discovered a whole pantry of 20-year-old pickled corn, beets, dry jams, and the like. We have also found perfume bottles, an old radio, odd tools, a silver-plate tray from a hotel in Baltimore that looks like someone couldn’t find an ash tray and a gold-plate spoon with a Hindu goddess. And that’s without ripping up any of the weird flooring or walls!

    posted by Jessica on 12-10-2007 at 1:17 pm

73. We were tearing out the floor of a basement bathroom and found three things. A Green River Whiskey token, a turkey wing skeleton, and a deer leg bone. I was afraid that the leg bone was human and relieved to find out it wasn’t!

    posted by pat c. on 12-27-2007 at 10:15 am

74. I just finished paying 400 to a remodeler in Boston that found a single quart beer can (with a spout type top-it was once sealed with a bottle cap)during a house tear down.If you find any old CANS,i’ll help you finance your remodel job.

    posted by oldbeer@gmail.com on 10-26-2010 at 2:25 pm

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