101 crazy building/ DIY discoveries

[ina]

And that was a local house restoration business owner!

Ah yes - I have experience with that type, too...

A few years back, I stayed in a flat owned by the local builder/decorator. About every third time somebody turned on the lights in the communal entrance hall, my entire flat had a blackout. They'd managed to put tongue and groove boards over the wires and, I think, drove a nail through one of them... That way I also found out that I paid for the lights in the hall - although I was only one person, in the tiniest flat, and the lights were used much more often by the numerous members of the two families who lived in the other flats!

[Thomzo]

Ah well if we are going to include gardens in this.....

A complete car engine plus several other parts just hidden in the bushes/weeds.

Several boxes of unused glass jars.

Over 1,000 empty, unused olive oil bottles still wrapped in packs of 24. It turns out the previous owner of the house had run a business selling speciality oils and dressings. The business had gone bust so she'd moved on leaving the unused bottles lying in the garden.

A rather nice side table and a sideboard. Since renovated and now in daily use.

A chooks water dispenser and a feed scoop.

The base of a drop-leaf table. I used it for a long time as first a potting bench and then a saw table. Now fallen apart and waiting for the bonfire.

Cheers
Zoe

[the.fee.fairy]

I wish i'd found such interesting stuff.

In a garden, i found a glass bottle - one of those old fashioned apothecary style green glass ones.

My parents took the carpet up in a house before i was born and found love letters for the previous (married) owner from his mistress!

That's it though...i'm enjoying this thread!

[old tree man]

I was working in the grounds of an old stately home near Leyburn North Yorkshire and the new owner asked if i could cut out a large timber in one of the old barns, as my chainsaw was the only thing that would cut the oak beam as i did part of the old ceiling came down with it (it was meant to by the way ) and in the debris were letters to the imperial war museum about photos that were sent to them in 1914 concerning the great war from a captain who lived at the property, if i remeber correctly they sent him 5 shillings and sixpence for the photographs.

[red]

have discovered that the sink and bath in the bathroom don't have U bends on the waste pipes.. which explains why you can hear outside conversations upstairs and why we put the plugs in to cut down on the drafts that come out of the plug holes!

[Millymollymandy]

have discovered that the sink and bath in the bathroom don't have U bends on the waste pipes.. which explains why you can hear outside conversations upstairs and why we put the plugs in to cut down on the drafts that come out of the plug holes!

Don't you have dreadful smells? In France, whether you are on mains or septic tank, without a U bend you are straight through to the sewers/s. tank and boy do you know it! We have to keep running taps in unused bathrooms every couple of weeks to keep the U bends full!

[mybarnconversion]

X. All electricity wires are red which makes guessing neutral from live fun.

X+1. Stalactites!

[red]

have discovered that the sink and bath in the bathroom don't have U bends on the waste pipes.. which explains why you can hear outside conversations upstairs and why we put the plugs in to cut down on the drafts that come out of the plug holes!

Don't you have dreadful smells? In France, whether you are on mains or septic tank, without a U bend you are straight through to the sewers/s. tank and boy do you know it! We have to keep running taps in unused bathrooms every couple of weeks to keep the U bends full!

nope cos both waste pipes go outside.. then over the drain thingy.. not directly connected.

[Millymollymandy]

That's lucky then!

[Arimiel]

In our 1900 townshouse we found
-beautiful old stuck at the ceiling after takin down a false ceiling 1m deeper...
- in the room after that we found very old paintings, regrettably 90% destroyed due to the false ceiling....
-After six layers of floor coverings one layer of old newspapers from 1922... they were even readable...
- a decline of 10cm in one room... my mother got seasick...
- out that there is always a new layer wall papers for you to take down... for every decade at leaste one....
- the original wooden floor ... 100 years preserved to perfection under layers of linolieum and carpets...

[red]

That ceiling must have been special to find.

[Annpan]

Our first flat had a lowered celing in the kitchen. It came half way down the giant sash windows and the 2x2 frame was secured to the walls with nails, into the plaster. then someone had used the lowered ceiling as a loft space, we found a giant dogs bed, a giant plastic toykitchen thingy, bags and bags of photographs, a microwave, several games computer (sinclair ZXspectrum) and a million other things.

This is a photo taken when most of the plasterboard was down... ah it reminds me of home


heres an after shot too... just to cheer myself up

[red]

nice one Ann.

[Millymollymandy]

That looks lovely. How can anyone lower a ceiling like that, through a window?!!!

[Enormous Sage]

OK, things I've found lying around in the weeds at the farm house I'm renting a room in.
1) an old Nissan pickup truck (in a very overgrown bit)
2) a metal turning lathe in one of the barns (now put back into service)
3) a complete set of garden tools (some were OK to use, others gone rotten)
4) 10 wooden cupboard doors, now recycled into a mini greenhouse
5) a huge roll of polythene, used in aforementioned greenhouse
6) a concrete statue of a cherub, now in the garden
7) a load of wooden decking, now used in veggie patch and cut up & made into planters for strawberries
8) 20 bottles of (unopened) wine in a box, circa 1980, which has gone bad (well I had to try it)
9) Enough plastic plant pots to keep me going for years.

The bloke who used to live here, used to go to auctions, buy stuff and then come home and get drunk (which he spent a lot of time doing)