apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My parents have lived in Vienna for the last 15 years and have been working all over eastern europe for a charity organization that is rebuilding the holocaust towns - yes ... this many years later, a great many of them are still in bad shape since they were behind the iron curtain for so long! Anyway, finding neat stuff in the walls is pretty much a daily occurrence for them ... from valuables to letters to toys, clothes, magazines, you name it ... my mom said it's some of the most beautiful yet heartbreaking of the work they do. It's all then given to some place that tries to find the owners and the rest goes to some sort of historical organization.

My parent's house was built in the fifties on what had once been a sort of community dumping ground. We've found all sorts of incredible things back there from glass apothecary vials to old toy metal soldiers to a machete. I love these treasures, they always have a sort of mystery about them. And once you clean off the dirt they often make quirky little decorations for the mantle!

Our house was built in 1963 and when we were cleaning out the fireplace vents we found an old silver comb, a shopping list, some hairclips, some nickles and pennies and a magazine subscription card. In the yard we found an old silver spoon. We are still renovating so maybe we'll find other treasures as well!

In a 1954 ranch house, I discovered old toys all throughout the yard, an axe head partially buried under a tree root, a big box of golf balls under the stairs, a decorative old-fashioned bronze key under the water heater, and a purse full of cash in a hidden compartment in my closet's ceiling.

I'm going to hide little treasures in every home I ever move out of, as a sort of time capsule for those who move in after me.

While remodeling our kitchen I discovered a letter from school telling the owners that their son was missing school days. I guess he chose to hide it behind the cabinets rather than let them see it!

That photo is really creeping me out...

I enjoy hiding things in the rentals I move out of..
you have to hide them very well, so the cleaning people dont find them.
Good hiding spots:
taped to the underside of a drawer,
above the door on the inside of a small closet,
behind light switch covers (assuming no fire hazard)

We have a home built sometime before 1909. We have found 1899 Indian head pennies (cool), a bamboo stick/cane that when opened reveals an ice pick (creepy), and skeleton keys (some of which work on the doors, some not). Still looking for the hidden millions!

About 30 years ago, one of my neighbors in Manhattan was renovating his kitchen (it was a rental, but he was doing some renovation in exchange for the rent staying where it was ... THOSE were the days!), and he pulled up several layers of linoleum in the kitchen to find a stash of hundred-dollar bills. He took then to the bank ... and it it turned out they were counterfeit!

Renovating my own kitchen two years ago, I didn't find anything more exciting then a newspaper from 1985!

Creepy, with a capital "C".

I actually like the image. I find it intriguing, it makes you want to dig some more. I can't wait to renovate our house more to see what we find. So far nothing yet, other than bad handyman work.

Our house had a mink stole (with the heads--eww), evening gown, artificial leg and some letters and old magazines in the attic. They weren't really hidden in the walls, but kind of cool finds, nonetheless.

Yep, that photo is a little creepy. You could make a cool Victorian style bell jar still-life though.

My family and I would find stone arrowheads in our backyard growing up.

My father and his family grew up in England (Yorkshire) and my Grandma found some Roman coins in the garden. My aunt took them to school for show and tell and the teacher kept them.

For me, the creepiness of the photo is offset somewhat by a sort of innocent curiosity that the image implies. It's actually that tension that makes this an effective (i.e. provocative) photo, artistically speaking.

It's much in the style of photographer Simon Larbalestier:

http://www.online.i12.com/othersite/v23/wad905.htm

my mom dug up old equestrian items from her back yard in the berkshires: a bit, part of a harness (buckle intact), and some iron peg that had an iron horse's head on the end of it. the house itself was built in the 1800s so she was not shocked to find the horse supplies but it was really exciting to see them and to be taken back to that former age. plus, she found a couple of small seemingly hand-blown glass storage bottles (thick and color dense with purple and blue).

under a piece of linoleum we found an old page of newspaper from August 1968, exactly from the day when soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia (we live in Prague). Under the old kitchen countertop we found one word written in big letters all across it: Svoboda (=freedom, but also a common family name...)

That photo is a lot like the stuff we keep finding in the bowels of our (c. 1920s) home. Before we moved in, eleven years ago, the house had been owned by the same Italian family since it was built.

A few of the things we've found in our yard, shed, and super-creepy basement:

- portrait of some family patriarch wearing his Mussolini uniform
- old cages used to keep guinea pigs and rabbits (for food)
- many, many wee skulls and bones buried in the yard
- very old wine bottles (still full, but too scary to drink)
- a dagger with a handle made from the hoof of some kind of very small ungulate

I've developed a sort of knee-jerk excitement/dread every time I hear my husband call out, "You wouldn't believe what I just found."

It's very Alison Lohman in White Oleander.

This looks like a natural for the Gothic Martha Stewart Website.

Very ironic that you posted this. I was digging in my back yard over the weekend and found a few objects: A paintbrush, dice, lighter. No bones yet so far!

Very creepy but cool.

My childhood home had the best attic ever. My sister, brother and I found old Farmer's Almanacs from the turn of the century, skeleton keys, very old dolls, weird knickknacks and clothes and books from the '60s and '70s. God I wished my parents still lived there. It was a nostalgia gold mine.

Well...we found a mummified squirrel. Click if you dare:

http://flickr.com/photos/halfmad/378042336/

very eerie photo, yet really interesting

bones-buried pet
doll head-kid probably pulled it off & left it in a hole
spoon-speaking from my experience as a child, if they can't find a shovel, they'll use a spoon to dig those holes
cup-sort of the same deal as the spoon

not so mysterious of a find if you were a child w/ a yard