In today's installment of "weird and inexplicable shit we have found when doing up our house", I give you...

[ShowOfHands]

A mummified frog.

Add this to gaping holes literally papered over, bricked up empty spaces (making the room 15% smaller for no discernible reason), a live cable simply cut in half, secret notes, walls held up with cement and gravel and a room we didn't know we had.

Anybody else found anything weird while renovating?

That's a party right there. I dread to think where the pickled onions went.

😂

@Dr1nkmorewater

We lived in a split level 1970s house for 5 years before we sold it. It was a bit of a wreck when we moved in so we had a lot of work to do. We always knew that there was a void under one of the rooms because the neighbours had told us they had one, but we never got around to opening it up. Told the new owners about it when we showed them around. A few months after we sold it we received a slightly embarrassing phonecall from one of our old neighbours who said the new owners had discovered an old cannabis factory in the void. Fortunately they believed us when we said it wasn't us - or at least I hope they did! Can't believe we lived there 5 years and never knew.

Must have been a huge void?! At least three metres deep would be needed for such a thing, plus electricity and easy access.. An uncle bought a rural property that had been used for the same thing. old ducting, plastic sheeting &c.

@Handsoffstrikesagain

Not inside a house, but a friend of mine found two bodies on farmland he owned from one of the most famous murder cases in the last 30 years.

Oh no..........Not the Much Marcle [?] case?

Our old Tudor house was full of relics that the previous owners had unearthed such as mini canon balls, many old clay smoking pipes, a handwritten turnpike ticket and various glass bottles. We left them there when we moved as they belonged to the house, but I loved them dearly, so hope the new owners cherished them as I did.

When we moved into our even older house, we found a medieval witches shoe in a cardboard box which the previous owner found in a wall. I find it really creepy and can't look at it!

I've had the dreaming about extra rooms and worrying about the extra housework. Better than the recurrent ones that I used to have - ground floor rooms utterly terrifying and dark, second floor white and bright and even more terrifying. That was fairly transparently about facing up (or not) to years of narc parenting/abuse

sorry - got a bit dark there :)

Replaced a terrible, barely functional front door in our last house. Massive cloud of black dust from a load of rotted cinder block that fell out when the old frame was removed.

On this house, we had to replace rotten decking, last year. It was covering the kitchen waste outlet - which sort of poured over the drain, which was blocked by rotten leaves, so mostly dribbled into the foundations of the kitchen extension.

My Dad found hundreds of old glass pill painkiller bottles buried in the garden of their 1920’s house, they were already aware the the original (or very early) owner’s wife had died of cancer so believed it related to that. Always makes me feel sad.

Our first house was built in 1598, we took down wall covering of thick cement and metal mesh in the kitchen, to find a high row of small windows, just the frames, in an oak beamed wall. It was a terraced house when we owned it, the next door house was built joining onto it, in1640. When the cementing was done, we thought in the 1950s, I wonder what they destroyed.

In a shed, a huge number of rancid part-used perfume bottles. All Avon, all fancy glass shapes. Naturally I binned the lot.
Months later I was angrily accused of ingratitude by the previous owner; I met her by chance in a shop, where she shouted at me that I was rude and ungrateful as I had never thanked her for the perfumes.
‘I left them for your little girl’ she ranted.

What, you left a lot of old rank perfume in glass bottles for my five year old?

We are not here long so have a current mystery.
We have two small windows that we don't know where they wre located. We can see them from outside but not inside.
I would believe they were boxed over in the 1980s except they're on a different level to other windows either upstairs or downstairs.
I must investigate again over the weekend.

[quote PlumKetchup]@CleverCatty
The symbols on the attic chimney sound interesting. Could they have been witch marks? I think people carved/scratched them near entrance points in a house to protect themselves against witches and evil spirits.[/quote]
This is totally outing, but there is NO such thing as witch marks, despite what the media call them. What you do find are ritual protection marks, of various types, from compass drawn designs to deliberate taper burns. Also, coins pushed into beams, thatch, fireplaces, etc. Same with concealed objects, witch bottles, mummified cats, etc (my job is researching the archaeology of superstition, magic, folklore, historic graffiti etc. I'm not woo!)

Finding this thread absolutely fascinating - has anyone read about the finds at Oxburgh Hall last year? SO much stuff that had either fallen beneath floorboards, or been deliberately hidden over the course of 500 years.

Our house was build in the 30's and the previous owner had owned it as a new build until she had moved into a nursing home in her 90's

The house was like a 1930s museum but was empty. The only thing I found was a pair of old ladies slippers in the larder. It was quite a sad sight as I knew she had recently died and they were probably her slippers.

I have dreams about about extra rooms too! I dream that I still own my old house and there is a huge cellar. I also own a small holiday apartment and in my dreams there are extra rooms and even another floor that full of the previous owners things.

I dream about those extra rooms ALL the time!

Wasn’t pleasant finding a mummified bird when works were being carried out!

The perfume bottles especially Avon are collectibles and worth money

Found a whole drawer of video tapes, unfortunately couldn't play due to the fact we had vhs and stash was the other type, which by then was obsolete.

Half inch of grease on top of kitchen cabinets, had to use wallpaper scraper to remove. I know we all neglect it up there but wow it was gross

@goldierocks

I finally finished renovating my Victorian terrace a couple of years ago. The lady I bought the house from was born in it and raised her family here; it had only been owned by that one family.

The bathroom was originally downstairs. It had seven layers of tiles on top of each other. I gained almost a foot of space all the way round the room once I'd stripped them off!

When I viewed the house I thought the sitting room walls were dark mustard yellow. On moving in day, the pictures were gone & the wall behind them was white...the colour was due to nicotine staining.

I uncovered a glorious original Victorian staircase that had been completely boxed over...just why?!

The front path was Minton tiled....they'd poured concrete over them. I tried unsuccessfully to rescue the tiles (sob).

I found at least 10 different names on hand-drawn height charts in the three bedrooms (behind many layers of wallpaper).

When I replaced carpets, the floorboards were covered in copies of the local newspaper dated between 1901 - 1947. I lost HOURS to reading through them all!

Practically every original feature had either been removed or covered up. I loved the ceiling heights and huge thick walls. It was a real labour of love putting all the original features back in....only took 27 years!

I love this story, I would have been upset about the tiles too.

@Ddot

Found a whole drawer of video tapes, unfortunately couldn't play due to the fact we had vhs and stash was the other type, which by then was obsolete.

Betamax, I remember those😂

We live in a house built in 1880 that was partially renovated by the previous owners. The well in the garden was chock full of junk, a bike, an old TV, a mattress frame.

Oh we did unearth the original stone fireplace that had been filled in and boarded. The chimney wasnt capped and the entire stack through the house was full of twigs from persistent jackdaws attempting to build a nest.

Tomasinabombadil
Thankyou still wonder if the tape case was what was actually in there. 😉

@NewHouseNewMe

We are not here long so have a current mystery. We have two small windows that we don't know where they wre located. We can see them from outside but not inside. I would believe they were boxed over in the 1980s except they're on a different level to other windows either upstairs or downstairs. I must investigate again over the weekend.

How old is your house? If it's very old, they might be windows to a secret stair! (I have read too many mystery stories! )

Failing that, are they behind a bookcase or something? I just watched that film Knives Out on DVD, and they have a hidden window in that, behind a moving bookcase. Can't see it from inside at all, only from the outside.

I decided to render outside yard wall, it was very bad so began by chipping off the old plaster. Half way through I realized it was mostly rubbish stuffed in large holes and not much wall. After lots of panic I just plastered over the crap 😱

Lillybee4
Avon bottles
I thought that but didnt like to say