Some folks find treasure when remodeling.....

[Anuj Prateek]

We ran into a electrical gremlin on Friday during renovation work inside the house. Basically, one circuit lost power. We still don't know why it's not working. We discovered several hidden junction boxes, and too many electrical hackery to list. Electrician will come on Tuesday to figure it all out.

In meantime I removed a section of basement roof. In the mix of low voltage wires, hot/neutral singles are running as well.

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[Jim Becker]

Very scary, Anuj. Kinda the same feeling I had when I discovered the previous owner of our current home did wire nut splices inside walls and had outlet boxes just floating in holes in the wall. Those things were the first updates I had to do at this house a couple months ago.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Before buttoning up a wall, I once wrote in it, “Congratulations! You have found the secret message. The treasure is hidden in the…” …and then I just scribbled something totally illegible.

[Jim Koepke]

Before buttoning up a wall, I once wrote in it, “Congratulations! You have found the secret message. The treasure is hidden in the…” …and then I just scribbled something totally illegible.

That reminds me or a comedy bit on the Dick Van Dyke show years ago. The elevator stopped and they climbed out the top and saw something written on the wall of the shaft:

In nineteen hundred and thirty six
Thomas Handy laid these bricks (it was probably a different name)
I would like to wish you luck
because if you're reading this YOUR STUCK.

jtk

[Rob Luter]

Another common practice was to fill the porch areas with debris prior to pouring the top slabs. Here's a story on a guy that found his porch filled with Bowling Balls.

https://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/...hind-home.html

[Roger Feeley]

We stay in close contact with my wife’s maid of honor. She has been clearing out her fathers house for a couple of years. The process started well before he died so he could help. There was was a set of shelves in the basement made from boards and those Hadith construction blocks. Her dad warned her to check the cavities in the blocks before selling the house because he though he had put some gold in there. It turned out that three of those cavities were filled with gold coins. She found a lot more gold and cash in little boxes and hiding spots all over the house. She told us that she was tempted to strip the place to the studs.

my wife and I have never been that lucky. Once, after moving into a house, the seller contacted us and wanted to come back and look for a gun in the attic.

[Paul F Franklin]

A lot of fun stories here! I once removed a cold air return grate and got excited to see what looked like a small container in the duct, just out of reach. I had to leave for work before I could find something to reach in and grab it, so all day at work I had fun imagining it contained jewelry or cash.

Of course it turned out to be the core from a used up roll of duct tape with just enough tape on it to make it look like a metal container.

[John K Jordan]

A lot of fun stories here! I once removed a cold air return grate and got excited to see what looked like a small container in the duct, just out of reach. I had to leave for work before I could find something to reach in and grab it, so all day at work I had fun imagining it contained jewelry or cash.

Of course it turned out to be the core from a used up roll of duct tape with just enough tape on it to make it look like a metal container.

When I was a little kid in PA my dad decided to tear down the plaster from a section of wall between the kitchen and family room, what might be the dining room in some families. The space the rooms was maybe 18" deep and he wanted to build in some bookshelves.

He uncovered another wall with a small rectangular wooden door. Hidden treasure? It turned out it had been a pass-through for food from the kitchen. The only treasure we found inside was a mouse skeleton. For several years afterwards I had a recurring dream where opening another small sliding door in the same room revealed a compartment with some toy, can't even remember what, that I had wanted for years but was too expensive!

Every time I build something I put my name and date inside the wall. I like Malcom's idea of the buried treasure note! I might use that, adding a nonsense map with X's for You are Here and Treasure. Our farm was part of a much larger property owned by a rich stone mason who died about 60 years ago (I use the barn and several buildings he built, probably 100 years old now) so who knows, there may very well be treasure buried but my metal detecting only found rusty tools and bolts. Then someone found a silver coin in their yard a short distance down the road and after lots of metal-detecting and digging uncovered a bunch of valuable old coins, mostly in the woods. Was there more treasure around?? Years later I heard the coins were likely from a stash stolen from an area coin collector, perhaps discarded in haste!

JKJ

[Brian Elfert]

Another common practice was to fill the porch areas with debris prior to pouring the top slabs. Here's a story on a guy that found his porch filled with Bowling Balls.

When my parent's house was built the builder just buried a lot of trash in the yard including partial sheets of plywood and the like. My parents bought the house from the first owner when the house was two or three years old. My parents had a sprinkler system installed and the sprinkler company had a bunch of issues burying the pipe because they kept hitting buried debris. They dug up a number of spots and that is when they found the partial sheets of building material.

[Jack Frederick]

Well, in my case this is all we found during the re-model. It is a 1948 issue. All i can say is that if you look at this, you can see why Hugh Hefner was such a success. With it there was also a single serving Trojan container. It is metal.

[Alex Zeller]

Reminds me about something from way back when. I was working for a glass company and we had a job putting in a glass wall at a company that built semi-conductor equipment. They were building a class 1000 clean room and wanted to be able for tours to see into the clean room without actually going through the process of being able to enter it. The contractor waited until the very last couple of days for us to do our work so the construction workers could assess the worksite with tools and stuff through the large opening. On our last day they fired up the air handler and immediately filled it full of trash.

Turns out the building was only tall enough for a 6" high raised floor. So the engineers designed the void in the walls to be a part of the air system. All of the contractors working there had been throwing trash into the walls and how it was getting sucked out. Things like normal trash plus stuff like food wrappers. Turns out the main contractor didn't tell anyone and assumed that people wouldn't be lazy and use a trash can. That contractor had to pay to have sections of the walls to be removed so they could be cleaned. The walls were made with a honeycomb aluminum panel that had been glued/ sealed in place to prevent air leaks.

[Jack Frederick]

Well, in my case this is all we found during the re-model. It is a 1948 issue. All i can say is that if you look at this, you can see why Hugh Hefner was such a success. With it there was also a single serving Trojan container. It is metal.

[Paul F Franklin]

When my parent's house was built the builder just buried a lot of trash in the yard including partial sheets of plywood and the like. My parents bought the house from the first owner when the house was two or three years old. My parents had a sprinkler system installed and the sprinkler company had a bunch of issues burying the pipe because they kept hitting buried debris. They dug up a number of spots and that is when they found the partial sheets of building material.

In a previous house, we had a lamppost (electric) at the end of the long driveway. It quit one day, and testing revealed there was an open somewhere between the house and the post. I decided it would be best to rent a ditchwitch and run a new line. Imagine my surprise when the big trencher started pulling out huge chunks of concrete and hurling them aside, bucking and rearing with every chunk. Evidently that whole section of yard was backfilled with the cheapest fill available: busted up concrete with about 2 inches of soil on top. No wonder the old UF feeder eventually failed since it ran through that minefield.

[Tim Elett]

I rented a house in Michigan and discovered the outer walls had been stuffed with newspaper for insulation then plastered over .

[Bruce Page]

I rented a house in Michigan and discovered the outer walls had been stuffed with newspaper for insulation then plastered over .

That sounds like the government built "Quad" I rented in Los Alamos, NM.