Neat find inside a wall

[KCBrewer]

I tore down some wood paneling around a fireplace in a rental unit that was built in 1969 to replace with sheetrock and found these along with a half smoked stogie and a hostess cupcake wrapper.

Apparently this was someones break spot 40 years ago. They both looked like the one on the right, but a little rinsing with water and they look like new. Perfectly preserved for all these years.

 

[JeepDiver]

Cool,
When I was in High School my parents had some work done to the bathroom plumbing and had to cut into the way. All of a sudden the saw started making an awful racket. Finally got the wall open and the plumber had cut through a Schlitz can just like that (house was built around 70) and there were 3 more with it. All had the Mississippi State tax Stamp on the top. I've still got one of them.

 

[superjunior]

pretty cool, like a time capsule. when I bought my first house from my wifes parents, I would find old bottles of black velvet everywhere, some empty some not - in the drop ceiling, under the deck, crawl space, ect..

 

[Mike M]

Been awhile since I've seen a pull-tab can

 

[tjpfeister]

You remember when cans DIDN'T have the wide-mouth? God I don't want to turn 30..
Cool find though!

 

[arturo7]

That's pretty cool.

The few times I've had to open up a wall, I left a copy of the daily paper inside.

 

[PVH]

When I framed and did trim work, I was amazed at the stuff that was entombed behind the drywall. I wonder if people 20 years from now will be impressed by all the "ice beer" cans that were the craze back then.

The stuff buried in your yard is even crazier. There's a good chance the contractor cleaned up the site by digging a shallow hole with a backhoe and pushing in all the small scrap and trash.

 

[Homercidal]

Digging next to our shed a few years ago for a flower patch and struck what would have been a perfectly preserved brown jug. Now it's a brown jug with the handle broken off and a small hole punched in the side.

I glued the handle back on and gave it to a friend for her "rustic" flowergardens. It matches the old rusty farm implements and knick knacks perfectly.

 

[jgln]

That is it.....I am tearing down all the walls in my house!!

The woods behind my house that I own were the dumping grounds for the farmers in the area for many years. We are still searching through the stuff. Everything from old bottles to an old carriage with iron wheels that had wooden spokes that have since completely rotted away. So far all that is left is 3 wheels (4th probably deeper) 2 axles and a bits and pieces of the rotted metal carriage. We have found hundreds of old bottles and I am sure much more if we really started digging.

 

[sfinger]

I bought a beer bottle from an old brewery in my area and asked the seller where he got it--turns out he is a "privy digger" who digs up the old outhouse pits. People would toss anything in there, especially beer and other alcohol bottles if they were hiding their drinking--you never know where cool stuff is going to turn up...

 

[KCBrewer]

That's pretty cool.

The few times I've had to open up a wall, I left a copy of the daily paper inside.

There was part of a paper from Christmas day 1969 in another one I did. It was funny to see the difference in the price of things then and now.

I don't often put things back in the walls before closing them up, but one time we did leave a "sculpture" in one, and if anyone ever does find it, they will probably be speechless and dumbfounded.

We pull a lot of pranks on each other at work, so once when we were doing some concrete repairs with floor leveling patch we had some leftover and made a large penis & testicles to give to one of the other guys as a "gift". Well he decided not to keep it, lol, so we tossed it in the wall and sheetrocked it up.

The best part of it was when I held it to my groin and stuck it out the window to one of the painters who was on his knees painting around the window and asked him if he could "give me a hand with this?" Luckily we weren't on a top floor because he fell over backwards and was in complete shock thinking I had really stuck my junk in his face and asked him for a hand with it. I'm cracking up right now just remembering it.

 

[KayaBrew]

Been awhile since I've seen a pull-tab can

Early eighties, IIRC.

 

[NorCalAngler]

When I was in college we were being evicted from our house because the city was condemning it. The landlord was a slum lord and we were fraternity guys so the house didn't stand a chance. Well on our final night we all got hammered and decided the house needed a good ass kicking. We started to kick in the walls between two of the rooms and in our drunken state were giddy with excitement when we discovered there were doors in the walls! Obviously they just sheetrocked right over the doors to wall off the rooms, but when you're 20 and hammered it was a trip. That's all I have to contribute to this thread.

 

[Fantastical]

That's pretty awesome! I wonder if the guy who left it there thought about who would find it in the future. I know I have before.

 

[Domminigan]

When Wallpapering my folk's house, we wrote messages on all of the walls.
My friend's house was built in 1885, and while removing a few baseboards on the house for shellac color matching we found broken toys, newspaper parts and such from the decades of use.
My house is from 1910, and I'm constantly finding stuff someone has chucked or buried or hidden in other ways. Under the porch gave me several newspapers, tire inner tubes, oil cans, pop bottles, and various other pieces of junk from between 1910 and 1932, the gardens have yielded arrowheads and other items from long before the house was built. Though in the walls that I repair I usually only find six to eight inches of mouse poop and dead bugs.