In an out-of-the-way kitchen cabinet, I found a box of the most exquisite silver place settings. Really marvelous. I called the former homeowner tout de suite so she could be reunited. She said, “I hid it so well that I forgot about it!” Later, when I moved the stove out of its spot to wash the floor beneath, I found a dozen wine corks and a silver butter knife. I tossed the wine corks (why do all kitties bat wine corks 'til they’re lost [the corks, not the kitties] under the stove?) and gave the former homeowner her butter knife.
Sheesh. That was some awkward sentence construction.
The seller also left a feral stray kitty whom she had fed for about 10 years. I agreed to snag the stray, and give the seller a call to come pick her up. I cornered the beastie in my sunroom, where she proceeded to use the window muntins as a ladder. She climbed to the bloody ceiling and clung there like a spider. I’ve never seen anything like it. I did manage to get her into a kitty carrier, and off she went to her new home, where she reportedly is quite content.
Picunurse, I’d do anything to own a mangle.
Jackelope, how do I see what’s beneath the Spoiler?
I forgot about my SILs house. When they moved in there was a full 12 place settings of Nortake bone china and some serving pieces (really nice stuff, too). She called the woman they bought the house from and she told them to keep it. It was a wedding gift and she didn’t want the china anymore. The lady had just gone thru a nasty divorce so I can see why she didn’t want the plates.
At one place, we found a couple of bottles of “Dante’s Down The Hatch - dans le Underground” wine. It was actually pretty tasty. Some time later we learned that the Underground was a place in Atlanta, and there was probably a restaurant there named “Dante’s Down The Hatch”.
At our current house, we found a box of tea that had fallen into the “blind” part of the cabinetry (where the kitchen cabinets come together in an L shape). And in the fireplace, we found an ugly wooden carved head, about the size of a soft drink can but a bit taller. It was hidden behind the andiron thingy. I actually called the former owners and left a message saying we’d found the thing, but they never came for it. I don’t know if it was a traditional thing (the family was originally from Korea, is that something traditionally done there?).
Ok, I’m not Jackelope. Nor do I play one on TV. But I’ll tell ya anyway. To view the spoiler text you just highlight it like you were going to copy it (left mouse button click and hold while you drag the mouse over the text)
The previous owner of our condo left behind a silverware tray, silverware, and some prescription medicine. We tracked her down to see if she wanted her stuff but never heard back. Might have something to do with the fact that she switched ovens when she moved, leaving us with a cheap POS. The neighbors who rent the condo next door had previously been renting this one from the previous onwer and there was a self-cleaning oven here. What we have is not self-cleaning and the dial is 75° off.
In the basement of a house my sister and brother-in-law remodled, the found a cupboard that was covered over so you couldn’t see it. Inside were some very old medical instruments that looked more like instruments of torture. They were kind of freaked out until they learned a doctor used to live there and used the basement as his office. I have no idea why the cabinet got covered up.
Over the course of two moves: an unrevivable basketball, a shoe, a circa-1960’s “space age”-styled Hoover vacuum cleaner (but no bags), a small but decent wooden wine rack, cans with leftover paint, a large terra-cotta pot, a solid wooden writing desk with three shallow drawers, an unopened jar of ginger extract, a coffee maker and filters, a toaster (4 slots, pop-up), a BBQ grill, a small hibachi, a large toolbox with some old, rusting tools, a small bedframe and headboard (ugly), some lumber, an inexpensive but servicable set of dinnerware and some miscellaneous other plates, mugs, and glasses, a large container of hair conditioner, a bottle of massage oil, a shaker-top tin of talcum powder, a pair of earrings (costume jewelry), a small Igloo cooler, and a wasp’s nest in a skylight.
Come to think of it, the BBQ grill also had a nest. Yellowjackets. [shudder]
Yeah. We found a jawbone, that’s how I know it was a pig. (Or possibly pigs; there were some leg bones that didn’t match up in size.)
Although if you simply must have a human remains story, I used to be friends with a girl on whose property there was an old family cemetery. It caused them no end of trouble, because under PA law, you’re not allowed to do anything with such a site unless you remove the remains, and to do that you must contact any relatives, and then you have to get permission from all manner of various local and state agencies, etc., plus the enormous cost of the whole operation…made for some great Ouija-board-playing and ghost-story-telling slumber parties, though.
When we started house hunting I had dreams of buying a house with an attic and basement full of interesting items.
Instead, our previous homeowners left ugly curtains upstairs, in the laundry room, in the kitchen and in the bathroom. They also left a funky, dingy towel on the toilet tank, a country crafty sheep in a pink dress and apron on top of the bathroom cabinet, and a big dried flower hanging on the wall upstairs.
Oh yeah, they also left wooden, heart shaped, pastel-with-white-dots-on-the-edges ceiling fan pulls on every fan, and a light switch cover that was trimmed in lace and ribbons and had little wooden hearts glued to it. Ugh.
We also got rolls of the flooring that is in the bathroom (Blue and white tile design) and in the kitchen (terrible, horrible, no good, very bad harvest gold design.)
Paraphenalia, paraphenalia, paraphenalia all over the house. Crack pipes. Syringes. Roaches. A shot glass, a big tub o’ Vaseline, and a Penthouse mag. (I don’t even want to talk about that. I actually walled it off rather than touch it in order to throw it out.
And most weirdly, a biggish nugget of marijuana right out on the kitchen counter. It was somehow missed during both the realtor showing and the inspection and not discovered until move-in. A housewarming present, perhaps?
QUOTE=Master Wang-Ka]
*A wall full of ancient rusty razor blades.
[/QUOTE]
Houses used to have a slot in the bathroom wall to dispose of dull razor blades.
Want to get rid of it? I’m working on setting up a home darkroom, and need the equipment. What kind of camera is it?
All the houses I’ve lived/spent lots of time in have been built new for their current owners, and racinchikki’s apartment was remodeled right before she moved in. I feel deprived.
This reminds me… In the master bathroom, I have a medicine cabinet that has a slot in the back for “Used Razors” - where exactly do they go? Is there a little box between the studs that catches these suckers, or is there just a little pile of rusty razors (not mine, I’ve never used the slot) sitting on the floor behind the wall?
My mom lives in a house built around 1850 – and there was a slot in the medicine cabinet for the used razors. They found out where they go when they decided to put in a new bathroom downstairs a couple years ago: In between the exterior and interior walls. The contractor started banging holes in the walls to make room for the new bathroom and ended up with a handful of rusty old razorblades. He didn’t get cut, thankfully, because he knows old houses often have this and he was expecting it.
Several jars of “preserved” peaches… at least they might have been had anyone remembered to put the lids on. They were gray and nasty. We spotted them on a shelf during our first tour of the house, and they were still there after the previous owner had moved out. She must have been blind to them…
Loads of canned food several years past the expiration date, in a prominent kitchen cupboard. Canned food lasts so long, they must have been a decade old.
Half a dozen oversized mother’s day cards that were roughly 4 feet x 2 feet in dimension when unopened.
A gigantic stack of well-worn porn magazines with a very large broken crucifix on top.
… And we haven’t even gone through the attic or the crawlspaces yet!
A closet with more than a dozen Stick-Ups on the walls, (they can’t be removed without replacing the drywall).
A giant Teddy Bear in the attic. One eye is missing and some of the stuffing is oozing out. My husband refused to touch it. Over the years it’s been pushed under the rafters, but it still looks at us with it’s evil remaining eye when we get Christmas decorations down.
One thing the previous owners didn’t leave us, is the shrubs in the front yard. They dug them up after we bought the house. We had to fill in the holes because the mailman fell in one.
To view the spoiler text you just highlight it like you were going to copy it (left mouse button click and hold while you drag the mouse over the text)