02 February 2010

"found things" during the renovation


So I thought I would share some of the interesting things that we found during the renovation project. The top photo was a "before" of the dining room. When we pulled the paneling off the walls, a chunk of plaster and wallpaper fell from the chimney enclosure. Where did the chimney go? So I poked around a little and decided to unbox the chimney and found this original c. 1855 chimney support. Yes, it's staying. It matches the one in the living room.


The contractor found both this letter opener (or murder weapon) and these cork top bottles in the crawl space beneath the original summer kitchen.



I love this. We found this cardboard box label under the loose linoleum flooring in the dining room. We saved several of these. I believe they date to about 1949, because the movie that John Deere produced and provided tickets for (see below) was released in 1949. The tickets were also found under the linoleum.


This "spike" was found down inside the chimney enclosure wall. Not sure how it got there.


Do you notice a theme with the old wallpaper for a background? The wallpaper below is a patriotic theme and actually is pretty cool. Most of this style of paper is in pretty poor condition, but there is a section (one wall) that is in pretty good shape in our entry. I told the contractor to preserve it today despite my wife's facial expressions. Pez? No way! Mental note: don't try to eat 9 year old Pez no matter how tired and hungry you are at 11:00 p.m.

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