Stuff Found On Job Sites
We asked our readers what odd things they'd dug up or pulled out of walls when working on old houses. Here are a few of our favorites.
Strange things can end up being buried in walls, ceilings, or elsewhere in old homes. And the older the house, the more likely that you’ll find some truly unique artifacts. So, we took to Facebook to ask our audience to share the most interesting things they’ve found on the job. We think you’ll agree that some of these definitely hit the nail on the head.
Be sure to head over to the original Facebook post to read 200+ more responses and to offer your own story.
Here are some of our favorites
“A Smith & Wesson pocket revolver 32 caliber break model, patent July 25 1871. Was found encapsulated in a plaster ceiling in a hundred year old bungalow in Centerport, New York. It was wrapped in lace cloth in a metal candy box, and it fell out of the ceiling during renovation. The pistol holds 5 rounds, but there were only 4 bullets.” – Paul W.
“A hidden room that was used to grow weed in the 70’s. Untouched for 30+ years! I’m not sure, but at the time, medicinal pot just became legal in California, where this was located, but once the new owner found out, he said he wanted to clean it all up and see if it worked.” – Shawn-Mike F.
“A LIVE piece of romex just coiled up in the ceiling… just the raw cut end of the romex… not inside a box or even a wirenut covering the hot wire… safe to say i fixed that right away!” – Jonathan M.
“I found a mummified pet python coiled up in a crawl space. I may have screamed like a little girl?” – Andrew D.
“Newspapers in the soffits from 1912, anatomically correct wooden skeletons in little boxes in the soffits brought in by squirrels, $3200 cash in a mayo jar, and lots of dead cats! The cash we gave to the homeowner and she was excited, she had plans to go to the gambling boat the next day.” – Brian C.
“A mass grave from the colonial period was discovered while digging a foundation for a house I was to frame in Waterford Connecticut. They relocated the cellar hole but we still found several bones in the backfill.” – Jim W.
“A newspaper from 1912 in a furnace room wall. And right there on the front page was an article about the search for survivors of the Titanic. ” – Shawn R.
“Remodeling a kitchen. The cooktop was against an exposed brick wall. Built into countertop was a stainless steel splatter shield you could raise up to protect the brick. It was fitted into the counter backsplash so well the owners who had been in the house 10 years didn’t know it was there. On another job I remodeled the house my dad grew up in. Inside a wall I found where two of my uncles had signed their names in 1943.” – Barry W.
signs of being drunk
“I found an old leather children’s shoe in the walls of my 1918 farmhouse walls (Polish family settled here). Someone I think said they did that for good luck or something.” – John S.
“I was rebuilding an exterior wooden balcony. I found a note from the carpenter that had repaired it previously inside a box column. It was dated approximately 15 yrs ago. The same day my daughter was born.” – John T.
“When doing some demolition in our 1871 house, I found newspapers from 1921, one of which had an article debating how you can tell if someone is drunk. It included the following line “if his head feels as though it had been laid on an anvil and hammered for three hours with a brick, it is an indication that he has [been drunk].” – Rob W.
Feel free to share your own story in the comments below (or in the original post).
More blog posts with feedback about life in the skilled trades:
Landing a Job in Construction – We asked readers to tell us what inspired them to start a job in the trades. Here are some of our favorite stories.
A Passion to Build – FHB readers share their stories of what got them started in construction.
Advice for People Entering the Skilled Trades – FHB readers offer guidance for people considering a career in the construction industry.
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That revolver was missing a round because you always carried it with an empty chamber under the hammer in order to prevent accidental firing. Now if there had been four rounds with one of them fired, that would be particularly intriguing.
Some folks have mentioned finding children's shoes in the walls. I found about a dozen childrens shoes in a wall of a house built in 1916. I also found a 1920 bottle of Schmernoff vodka with a long twine tied around the neck so it could be lifted up to the attic for a nip and then lowered back down. At least that's my guess. I also found a couple dozen empty vanilla extract bottles in the adjacent wall. Someone may have had a drinking problem...
In another house I found that the newspaper "police beat" had been used like rosin paper under the floor covering. It's the only part of the newspaper that was used. Of course we took a break to read the paper...They dated to prohibition and the majority of arrests involved illegal alcohol. On the same job I found a razor sharp chisel in a wall from renovations done in the 1950s.. I still use it today, 15 years later.
A friend of mine rehabbed an old house to move his family into. He found nothing in the walls. When he started closing up the walls he put a few dollars and a note inside one wall.
My father used to convert brownstone row houses in Boston from rooming houses to condos in the 70's. After buying a building, he would send his demo team in to start the tear out. His deal with them was a fixed price plus they got to keep anything they found in the building (typically, scrap to sell). Well, one guy hit large when he tore up a space under the basement stairs to reveal a set of silver printing plates from the Brinks robbery. They had been hidden and forgotten. My father never saw that guy again!
In 2004, during the construction of a flip, I hid in the wall a copy of the Boston Globe newspaper with the front page declaring the Red Sox World Series win. A little bonus for the next generation.
A polling list signed by folks who voted in the 1934 California Gubernatorial election in which Upton Sinclair was a candidate. Found inside a San Francisco garage wall during earthquake retrofit after the 1989 earthquake.
During the 1990 renovation of Mead Hall, an 1836 mansion on the Drew University campus, we found a buggy whip behind the original plaster walls...in the master bedroom. Also, a wooden box artfully hidden behind a panel that was behind a folding interior shutter, both of which were painted shut decades prior, was discovered, although it was reportedly empty when the owner was called to see it. We'll never know! Finally, the top edge of the top trim piece on an interior door casing was signed by the painter in 1840, and never painted over in the dozens of subsequent paint jobs.
In the late 1970's a teacher colleague of mine inherited a ranch house on property that had been owned by his family since 1852. The original main ranch house dated from that period. In late October of 1881 a ten year old boy died "of a fever" (likely Typhoid) while living with his family at that home. His mother--not adhering to the standard practice of the day of burning all his belongings--instead put his possessions in a small trunk. This included the floral cross that had been part of his funeral service. She then plastered the trunk into an interior wall space large enough to fit it under some stairs.
A persistent family legend held that "There are some children's clothes...some toys in the walls of the ranch house" but no individual still alive in the 20th century could verify the truth of the tale let alone point out their location. When the demo work for a major renovation was begun in 1981 builders were instructed to be on the look out for any unusual items. What they soon discovered--almost exactly 100 years to the day after the young boy's death--was the legendary trunk.
It contained not only several home made toys but a pair of child's button shoes, other well used items of his clothing, some new and unfinished shirts, a Civil War "kepi", a coat with a fishhook and line looped under the collar and a tobacco box in the pocket, a used handkerchief, a pair of hand carved wooden arm splints bearing a penciled account of the accident that led to the broken arm and a small "fever journal" his mother had kept during his dying month of October 1881.
During his final years in education my friend took the trunk to hundreds of third grade classrooms where California history is central to the curriculum. He shared what was known of the life and times of a Central Valley boy of the 1870's--of Johnny Quiggle's ranch life--while he slowly unpacked the items in "Johnny's Trunk" for the children to see.
In commemoration of our friend's life and on the weekend of what would have been his 80th birthday, a group of us mounted a stage production using an original script inspired by years of conversations with our colleague regarding the trunk, its contents and the many possible reasons the mother may have had to go to such lengths to save the items. "The Lost Boy"--including a live band playing an original music score--played to 3 sold out houses at The University of the Pacific in Stockton, California...less than 20 miles from Johnny Quiggle's home. Audiences included many teachers and students who had heard "The Trunk Story" in earlier times in their own classrooms from a relative of Johnny himself.
In renovating a house I owned that was built about 1830 in New Hampshire I found numerous small reminders of the original builders, including pieces of broken clay pipe (tobacco pipe) , a wooden paddle in the wall by a chimney, used to apply the clay mortar, and various metal tools of uncertain use, bone buttons, and a Union Army kepi. There were also copies of a printed journal for farmers, numerous glass stopper bottles, and an antique glass made with a radiating pattern on the side, meant to hold a candle. When I was repairing one section that had been damaged by a falling tree in the famous 1938 hurricane that devastated New England, one wall had been lined with old newspaper as a building paper. It had the complete funny pages (in color, but the humor was more strange than funny now) and on the front pages a few stories about the political doings of a fellow named Hitler.
It always gave me a thrill when I would need to dismantle something so old to realize that the last person to touch a brick or nail lived over 170 years before.
About 10 yrs ago I built a brewery in a building that was originally built in 1901 as a theater. Upon my first inspection for creating an estimate I had quite the fright. I was crawling around in the pitch black crawlspace alone with a flashlight. I crawled all the way back to a corner and my light caught the glimpse of a pile of bones about the size of a human with a femur bone on top of the pile. I flipped out, I’ve never crawled so fast in my life to get out of the crawlspace. Police were called to the scene. The femur bone looked to be the size of a human, so the officer basically had the same reaction as I did. The forensic team was called. Turned out to be a small cow that somehow ended up in the crawlspace.