What have you found when clearing out?

[rebl]

We've been gradually clearing out the garden in our nice new house since February. We've spent everyday every weekend out there and since my dh was made redundant 8 weeks ago he's spent a good 3 hours out there everyday. Today I think we finally reached the back, we hit the hedge so I think we must be there!!

Over the last few weeks we've found piles and piles of paving slabs, broken bricks, breeze blocks, kitchen units, an adults bike, a childs bike (completely buried), more glass than I can ever imagine, an ancient iron wheel barrow, 2 B&Q large buckets of nails and screws, a bicycle wheel, an old water tank, 3 large metal poles sunk 1m into the ground each of them, floor tiles and enough roof tiles to make a substantial saving on our extension!

We'll not get rich on what we've found but we've had enough to warrent selling metal to the scrappy. That has paid for all the wood for our raised veg borders . We've had a million trips to the tip but we're nearly there.

We've got to do the loft soon, wonder what will be up there!

What have others found? Its amazing what people leave/bury in their gardens and lofts.

We once found a tree that had been chopped down and into logs, then buried in the garden. My friends preferred to think of it as a viking longboat, for some reason. It was definitely just logs though. It was quite exciting digging it up - the main trunk bit just kept going.

We used it to edge a border.

Rebl how big is your garden!!!!!!!!!!!!??? Did you not notice those things before?

I wish something exciting was here but we have nowt, the most I found was a toy ironing board! Though I was clearing out the cupboards the other day and found a box full of letters from my mates / old boyfriends from my teenage years, plus a million concert ticket stubs! It was funny reading some of the letters but there were too many to look through (must have >500..) so they are now in the attic for a good read in another few years.

I'm thinking of selling our front door as it will just get scrapped in the extension. Where are you selling your stuff?

I recently found a newspaper photo of my son and his friend at a hockey camp when they were 9. (23 years ago). They were in the centre of the photo as they were the only two boys out of a group of 25 and they were quoted as saying they wanted to play hockey for Scotland. Nine years later the played for Scotland in the under 18's, under 19's and under 21's. My son had to drop out because he moved to the middle east but his friend went on to play for Scotland.

People down the road from us found that there was a patio and 2-tier garden! The previous owners had just tipped loads of soil on top to make it level and laid a lawn - new people went to dig out flower beds and hit paving slabs, they took months and unearthed a patio and retaining wall where the garden had been 2-tier before.

I moved into a house many years ago that had previously been rented out, and not particularly looked after - there was loads of crappy furniture that we took to the dump. Moved the chest of drawers and found loads of copies of porn mags under the bottom drawer!