do layers and layers and layers and layers of wallpaper count?

Our home was a Sunday Home built for a wealthy farmer in 1906. It was later owned by a famous author/historian, a doctor, and then a famous pharmacist family.

I keep hoping for cool stuff... but not much has been found. We did find an old medical journal, and a few pages that appear to be comments to the instructor about a pharmacy class (the instructor being the pharmacist who owned our home).

http://cottageofstone.blogspot.com

While rebuilding the closet in my son's room we found old wallpaper with cowboys and horses. very cool.

I grew up in New Orleans in a house built around 1900 and--though it's not exactly IN the house but in the yard--we found dozens of iridescent glass bottles, clay pipes, and even a small porcelain doll--in an area that must have been the former location of an outhouse.

We found tons of brick and cement blocks buried in our yard which we used to build our water feature, two large glass jars that I use to hold tools in my studio, and my most favorite are some old pieces of wood that have wormholes. I display them in my family room. They are a cool contrast to our modern interior.

That looks like a crochet hook---maybe even sterling silver.

It didn't need to be unearthed, but I found a framed certificate from 1934 for the induction of a girl into a church group. Researching it (à la History Detectives) really shone a light on the role of the Catholic church in Quebec during the 1930s, and its subsequent decline in social importance.

I agree that it looks like a crochet hook. My family's brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn was also built at the turn of the last century. When my parents remodelled in 1963, opening the chimney revealed a stash of Long Island Railrood timetables (the Atlantic Avenue station is just 1/4 mile away) from 1907. People were going to the Hamptons, even then!
I think they had to take a ferry from the foot of Atlantic Avenue for part of the way, tho.

Found while taking out some old shelving in the garage.. A Braille Playboy Magazine from 1982 and a bottle of creme de menthe. We also discovered our heating ducts were made from scrap Hamm's Beer sheet metal. They have the Hamm's logo printed all over them.

I grew up in Lunenburg, Mass. about 45 minutes outside Boston in a home that had been in our family for over 100 years. I used to treasure hunt in the barns and when I was brave enough, the attic. The attic was sort of terrifying. But every nook and cranny of the place was filled with what my relatives had left there. There were ledgers from when the house was a boarding house for a bit. I also found white gold and rose gold wedding rings that I still have today. There's really just far too much to list. The entire house and the grounds were one big vintage/antique treasure chest. I miss it more than anything. We were forced to sell it when I was 18 due to high property taxes and heating costs in the winter. It was a 4,500 sq.ft. house heated by oil... The saddest part was that we had to leave the barns and the attic full because there was just no way we could bring it all with us.

Last week in my office (which was originally a textile mill) i found a bunch of sewing machine needles between the floorboards. I keep seeing them in the gaps int eh floors now. I pull up all the ones that are sticking out. I pulled out 5 needles and a ball bearing so far.

A few weeks after moving into our cabin in Northwestern Wisconsin, my mom was changing the sheets in the master bedroom. She looked up at me, surprised. She discovered an antique, loaded rifle between the mattress and box spring.

The owner's husband died a few years earlier, so I wonder if she was scared at night in a big empty lake house. Turns out a couple parts on the rifle were replaced by modern pieces, so it wasn't worth too much.

When taking out our toilet paper holder, we found newspaper from 1953! VERY COOL!

I found old bottles and newspapers in the walls of my former house.

I also left some relics for future discoveries. We did some DIY remodeling and tucked some items in soon-to-be sheetrocked spots, including a photo Christmas card, a note, and.. actually I can't even remember!

I've never found anything interesting in the States, but for 15 years my parents lived and worked in Eastern Europe rebuilding holocaust towns that had been left in ruins for decades since. As you can imagine, they found amazing things in the walls every day ... my mother's favorite finds were stashes of family photos and newspapers/magazines. The valuables and photos went to a historical foundation that tries to track people down, and my mom kept many of the papers and magazines and made little framed historical vignettes of them (along with found objects like buttons, etc.) to give to friends.

Oh, and clothing patterns. I forgot about those. She once found several boxes of awesome women's patterns from the '30s stashed in an old closet.

a few gross things...

link
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True Story. Not long after we moved into our current home, we replaced the dishwasher. When we pulled it out, there was a picture of the previous owners nude! Just sitting there, but obviously posing. It apparently wasn't an accident that it somehow got there either, because it was tacked onto the back wall! We thought it was funny, if odd. In fact, *blush* even discussed doing it ourselves and continuing the "tradition" of the house. We eventually opted out. lol

The house I grew up in was built in 1818. It was a school and when my grandparents raised my dad and his siblings it was an inn and tavern. We moved in in 1974 and when renovating found several inkwells shoved in floorboards from the school days. We also found old liquor licenses in Grandma's name right after Prohibition.

While attending college in Waltham, Mass. my friends and I lived in an old, old house. In the course of fixing some wiring we had to rip up a wall. Inside the wall was a complete first section of the local newspaper (late 1940's?). While perusing the newspaper my roommate's mouth fell open: right there on page 3 was a feature article, with photograph, of her grandmother!

I keep hoping to find some treasures in my circa 1900 condo in Boston but so far I have only found someones old retainer. EEEWWWW>

ddg425, that is *crazy*.

We found a tinkertoy connector under the 1950s stove in our 1901 apartment...

when i was about 10 we moved into a house that had a paddle in the attic. it was for spankings and read "board of discipline" on it or something. she dusted that right off.

I grew up in a big, old house that was built in 1913 and had undergone a lot of modifications over the years. We found a kid's old report card from the 1930's behind some wallpaper. While this isn't exactly a thing, we did find a staircase that had been walled up and turned into a closet. It turned out to be a back staircase that winds its way up into a hallway on the second floor (the wall had been taken out to create a larger bedroom) and then goes up to the third floor--where the servants used to live. My parents knocked out the back of the closet and restored it. We also found a fireplace behind the wall in one of the bedrooms, and the room that was mine growing up has a wall safe!

I grew up in a house built in the 1870's. When re doing the upstairs bathroom, my Dad got in the space between the floors and found a ton of stuff- a Dr's bag, a bunch of old medicine bottles, dishes, newspapers, and a horse skull. Yep, a horse skull.

In this house-built in the early 70's- the only thing I have found of interest was a large baggie of very, very old pot in the rafters in the garage.

We live in a house that was built in the 40s. We are hoping for some finds, but it has been renovated before, so I am sure we won't find much. Our favorite thing is some footprints of a Robert from 1950 on our drive. My husband and I imagine Robert is now our parents age with much bigger feet :)

We have left things in previous homes. Generally, if we fix something up or what not we always sign our names and the date.

When my landlady was having some renovations done in her 1928 house, the carpenters pulled bags and bags of crumpled up newspaper out of the walls that had been used for insulation--everything from the 1940s to the 1960s (the house has had some additions put on). She also found a window by the back door that was hidden behind the vinyl siding, with some pink insulation stuffed between the window and the siding. Someone had tried to nail the insulation in place...into the window.

We also found flyers for Eatons and Consumer's Distributing (defunct Canadian stores) in a crawl space in the old coal room. We had a good giggle at the moustaches on the male models.

We didn't really unearth it, but in our house, which was built in 1968, in the attic we found boxes of the original owners' tax records (they died leaving no immediate heirs, I think whoever cleaned out the house wasn't very thorough), a box of the original owner's writings (he catalogued fossils), and an old ladies hat that was down to just the underpinnings. Behind a cabinet door in the garage that was stuck we found a guest book for the funeral of the original owner's first wife. I'd never seen anything like it. There are also notes tacked up in the attic in different areas with lists of what was stored there. We're keeping it undisturbed for posterity and hoping we unearth even more stuff!

We bought our house almost 5 years ago. It was built in 1949, so not ancient by any standard. However, over the course of remodeling we've found a treasure trove of interesting things. In the backyard: a pathway that lead to the cement pad of an old (now nonexistent) outbuilding, a small cement cherub's head, bottles, license plates, plastic toys, etc. I honestly kept expecting to dig up a body or a weapon. In the rafters of the garage: baseball cards, matchbox cars, an Elvis 8-track and an "Educational" sex film (8 mm) from the early 70s, late 60s. We continue to work on the house. Who knows what we'll find next.

We found a small gold-painted dog and a couple of other toys along with lots of newspapers in the walls of our 1929 house. It was fun reading about our town in the '30s; many of the family names were the same!

We live in Vancouver and have a shingle-style Queen Anne-home, built in 1907. When we bought it, the attic was papered in newspapers from 1931 (pretty cool but a little spooky), so we documented it and chose a few boards to save when we renovated. We found some stuff in the walls, too, including a tiny playing card, a postcard of a cruise ship, and a pay-stub for $11.58 (for travel expenses for a mill company). Also a bunch of hand-forged nails and a petrified mouse... I plan to make a shadow box with all of it (except the mouse, which our shop-vac took swift care of).

I bought a small house years ago and found a darkroom behind a hidden door in the basement. It included a big sink and a safe light. Since I studied photography and had my own enlarger, it was a wonderful find. That little house "gave" me several things while I lived there, most importantly a great sense of safety and comfort after a difficult divorce.

I used to live in an old Victorian house built in 1892, with an old detached garage filled with junk. One day, out of boredom, me and a neighbor decided to check out the garage to see what was there. We mainly found a lot of old broken lawn equipment, but among all the debris we found some interesting objects such as license plates from the 30's, an old Starbrite fan which I believe is also from the 30's, a beat up old cabinet made from some crude pieces of wood, which was buried under a pile of discarded wood. The cabinet was interesting...the door was made from an old window shutter. It was in sad condition, but I sanded it and painted it and it now looks great. Also found some old empty medicine bottles from the 30s and 40s (the previous owner of the home was a doctor).

Not trying to encourage a trend here, but like another commenter, I once found a big, crusty baggie of weed stuffed under an old heater in my apartment. It was at least 20 years old. I donated it to some brave neighbors. The apartment was rented by scores of college students before me. This is the same town where the notorious Michael Phelps bong photo occurred. (Not the same apartment, though.) Draw your own conclusions. haha

My house is from around 1885, and I'm only the third owner - can you believe that!? The people I bought from were 85 and had lived here from about 1953 till 2003. Prior to that, it belonged to the family of the builder who built lots of houses in my neighborhood.

I found this pinkish 80s-over-60s faux Victorian nightmare when I moved in:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/mbc1963/House%20Pictures/LRJune03before.jpg

After I pulled down the wallpaper and pulled up the icky old pink rug, I found this cool linoleum from 1938 covering my living room and dining room floors. I can date it, because there were 1938 newspapers stuffed in between the floorboards.

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/mbc1963/House%20Pictures/LRDRLinoleumMar04.jpg

Down in my basement, I have an outhouse. Seriously, when they plumbed the house, they lifted the actual outhouse and installed it around the basement toilet. Window and all. :) I found some strange old plaster fish hanging on the outhouse wall, and always wondered what era they were from - until I had the upstairs bathroom renovated, and the builders found the old bathroom walls still existing, right under the walls added in the 50s. Here's the original 1920s or 1930s pink and gray fish wallpaper that was in there:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/mbc1963/House%20Pictures/OriginalBathroomWallpaperSmall-1.jpg

Happy happy day for me, when the floor refinisher guy came and sanded the old, near-black varnish off the dining room floor and uncovered this:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/mbc1963/House%20Pictures/DR81104.jpg

And the same guy polished up the never-before-polished pine planks (designed to be covered by carpet), and turned them into this:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb99/mbc1963/House%20Pictures/Floors.jpg

There were lots (and lots!) of old lady hairpins under the rugs I pulled up. The only truly cool historical artifact I found was an antique 1880s pamphlet extolling the virtues of some sort of Sarsparilla tonic. It was up inside the dropped bathroom ceiling (installed to house the ventilation). I carefully saved it and replaced it in an old set of built-in drawers, for the next owner to find.

Mary

My parents found an old iron bed frame that ended up being my bed until I was a teenager. They also found a cannon ball from the civil war buried in the backyard

Well, I'm jealous...I've only ever lived in homes built after World War II and have never found any interesting artifacts.

The closest I've come to unearthing a relic in my own home was when I was managing two 1960s apartment buildings. I went to lock up the newly-vacant unit next to mine after the painter left and discovered that he had found a faded photo of Marines at Camp Pendleton (dated 1974) in one of the cabinets.

Our house was built in the 1930's, and has been in the family since then - we've found a few interesting things.

One, an old fleur-de-lys belt buckle in the backyard, under our old swing set. My Dad has it around somewhere. We don't know who it belonged to.

A lottery ticket from the early 1970's was stuck inside the walls. Dad unearthed it when he redid the upstairs in the 1990's. It wasn't a winner. We checked.

Everyone who has lived in my house has carved their name into a post in the crawlspace off of my bedroom. Since the structure of the house isn't very sound, and it's a tiny house on a prime piece of real estate, whoever purchases the property next will very likely be a contractor who will tear it down and build a mansion. So we plan to take the post with us when we go.

The house I live in was built around the 1860s. Ripping up old flooring we've found the floors covered in old newspaper, whilst in the garage we found some old war medals. Still have rooms to renovate- hoping to find some interesting stuff.

I had a house from the thirties moved from development to renovate. A workman found an arrowhead on the ground at it's new site, I wish I had found it. There are crumbled newspapers from 1942 stuffed into the walls. I got excited when I felt a little box over the sill of the linen closet, but it was just some ex-lax circa 1960.

i found a circuit city sales flyer and a computer with windows vista in my house last week.

:) Cootiefree.

I found a 2007 403(b) statement. They don't make retirement investments like that anymore.

Finding the razor blades was unnerving... (The medicine cabinet on the other side of the wall had a slit in the back to drop your razor blades into, and they just fall into the wall. Apparently this was a common practice, so watch out when demolishing old walls.)

A little further down the wall the small ant colony was even more unnerving, especially to the ant-phobic friend who was wielding the pickaxe.

In still the same wall I found a gun-cleaning kit. I haven't found anything else in any of the other walls.

I found the obituary for the wife of the previous owner up on a high shelf. Someday I'll use it for labels for the rose liqueur I make from her wonderful rose bushes.

I gutted my first house in 1979 - the first floor was the town's original mom and pop store and the second the living quarters. I found a lot of unsavory items, but one gem - some poor kid had hidden his report card under the floor boards - straight F's.

Our 1920s house had been somewhat renovated before we came along, so who knows what they found but nevertheless, we found some cool stuff. Our first find was a perfectly preserved, completely flat Ivory Soap paper label circa 1930 under the dust in the crawl space. That crawl space was a goldmine! Marbles, bottles, ice cream maker lid, rake head, child's leather shoe (just one!), lots and lots of tobacco tins (I suspect we found someone's little secret there). After it rained, certain spots in the backyard were great for finding bits of china, glass buttons, and the like (remember, there was no trash pickup once upon a time). I have all those finds displayed in an old mason jar. Lastly, when we removed and rebuilt a hideous addition to the house that included the old back porch, we found the best stuff: all the pieces to a child's bowl (we put it back together) with a little porcelain kitten peering over the edge and a perfectly whole and BIG earthen ware jar. That house was truly a labor of love, so when we had to move for work (sob!) my husband crawled deep into the crawl space and attached a plaque we had made to a floor joist. It said "Our family loved this house," along with our names and dates we lived there. It's nice knowing a little piece of us is still in that house.

I recently found a glass Coco Chanel bath Oil bottle, circa 1950. I emptied the old oil and placed it on a mirror platter with my other bottles of perfum.

An interest letter from the LA Dodgers, to the son of the previous owner, when he was in high school in '86. Not sure what happened afterward, but I also found some articles that said son would not be prosecuted for some questionable union activity, in early '08. Also a porcelain figurine of a shoe, with a "Made in Occupied Japan" inscription. Not worth much (I already checked). Since the house was built in '27, and owned by the same family for just as long, I'm guessing I probably won't find anything worth mentioning.

When I moved into a studio in Hell's Kitchen (long before it became a trendy 'hood) there was a crack pipe under the radiator in the bathroom. :O

Our house was built in 1958 and we found an old whiskey bottle in the wall.

This was all so excellent!!!...the report cards hidden/the old newspapers are a total treasure..you just wonder!!..Have found the razor blade slot/cabinet myself while back..we don't think WE leave anything behind when we move from our homes/apartments (unintentionally)..but we must!..in an almost 300 yr old home we found:baby leather shoe/tin candlestick and a box of diamonds.(kidding)...thank you everyone for your stories!!..I'm still ill with the big pink 'salon' pix..from mary b c....

The only places I lived that had this kind of potential were rentals, and nothing was there. All my own homes (family and newer) have been new or pretty new c onstruction.

But one of those recurring dreams we all have is that I discover an until-then undiscovered room in my house full of treasures! There have been many variations, but always there are wonderful things nobody would have left behind...

Our house is only from the fifties and has very little interesting stuff, unfortunately. The best find was when we had just moved in, finding a green jewellery-type box in the back yard (can't have been there for long - it was a bit dirty but otherwise fine) which I still have, and, when we pulled up the wallpaper in the kitchen, about four OTHER layers of wallpaper, including the most intriguingly hidious seventies orange and brown floral paper.

When I lived in Jamaica Plain (coincidence: check the label on the bottle pictured above!) in a 1929 apartment house, I found part of an ancient kotex box (early 30's?) stuck between the wall and some trim inside the linen closet. I felt strangely connected to my menstrual fore-mothers.

I live in a farmhouse from about 1850. We've been finding lost game pieces from the 30's. We can't figure out what games they'r from but one of the cards involves a monkey and a grouper which is apparently worth 30 points.

My parents live in a 1950s cape on long island, so there weren't many interesting relics left behind.

However, when I was a little girl, we were having work done on the house, and the roof was completely ripped off and it rained, and my bedroom ceiling caved in. In the ceiling was a tin full of subway tokens! I can't imagine why someone would put that in there...

scary and disappointing. when removing old wallpaper in the living room, anti-jewish sentiments scrawled on the wall were uncovered....

My grandpa finished the basement in the house he lived in with my grandma from the 1970s until he died in the early 90s. Even with my dad and my uncle digging through EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE hiding space they could think of (behind every ceiling tile, behind loose wall panels, behind not-so-loose wall panels, in the wetbar, around the breaker board, under the flooring, beside the chimney, under the stairs...) literally everywhere, we're all still sure we left stuff behind when we helped my grandma move.

There were jars of coins, certificates, keepsakes, ledgers and records, all of it hidden for "safe-keeping." Thankfully my grandpa had the presence of mind to tell my dad and uncle about it before his passing or we would've left a treasure trove for the new owners. I think even the cigar box with the remnants of his concentration camp survival kit were hidden in that basement (we have those, thankfully).

We found an empty Doelger's beer can from the early 1930s when we were digging out part of our basement. We also found a rusted out milk can(which I plant flowers in) and a sign with the name the original owners gave to the property. Nothing worth money, but an interesting glimpse into the past

My partner was working on the crawl space adjacent to our sun room, adding insulation, when he found a framed photo inside the wall. A man and a woman, holding each other closely and standing cheek-to-cheek, looking very happy. He is in uniform and has a cigarette in his hand. Looks like the photo was taken in the 40s or maybe the 50s. Why someone would stuff that photo in the wall, who knows. But it came out in perfect condition and is now hanging in our sun room.

It's a hook for tatting lace, not for crocheting. It's too small to crochet with. My husband's grandmother made beautiful lace, and I have some of her celluloid and bone tatting hooks and other tools.

My family owns a Greek Revival that was built for a merchant in Salem, MA in 1834. We've extensively renovated the house and found numerous exciting items. When we were replacing the ceiling in the living room, we found an 1834 penny, which is now framed on display in the room, so we replaced it with one penny for each year that we had lived in the house up to that point. Some of the more amazing discoveries were as a result of the quirky way that they built additions onto the original home, which was a simple square shape. Wings were added to the north and east sides of the square, but they simply built over the old building, so when we renovated the library, we discovered an entire window (shutters and all) inside the wall! We left a framed hole in the wall that you could view the window through, but hid it behind a hung painting so you'd have to know it was there. When we renovated the third floor, we opened up a wall to connect two areas and found the original roof in a dead space between them, shingles and gutters and all. The best part was that there were numerous empty turn-of-the-century elixir and tonic bottles in the gutters, which are now proudly displayed behind my father's desk, which is especially fitting since he is a doctor. We've added our own touches to the house for future owners (although I hope it will be in our family indefinitely). Aside from the new pennies, we etched our signatures into the concrete under the hearth of one of the fireplaces and added a hidden doorway in the library (a bookcase that opens to the hallway on the other side).

Perhaps someday AT Boston can do a house tour!

Thank you, MaryBC, for your picture of the linoleum. It brought tears to my eyes, because it is the same linoleum that was on the floor of my living room growing up, until 1965 when Hurricane Betsy left 18 inches of water, mud, snakes, and assorted grossness in the house that had to be shoveled out and cleaned up before reoccupation! Needless to say, the linoleum went! Sigh. But it was great seeing it again. Thank you.

Dana