You know how we hid a secret note in our first house to hopefully be discovered in a few decades? Well, we found one in our new house! It doesn’t appear to be very old, so we’re guessing it’s from the previous owners (who lived here for 22 years, so it’s still pretty amazing). Where was it? Tucked behind the large wall mirror in the hall bathroom. See that tiny nub sticking out under that wonky orange arrow?
While John was giving Clara her bath I was hanging out with them slash standing-around-staring-at-things-I-can’t-wait-to-update when I looked up and saw it peeking out of the top of the mirror. So I tugged on the corner, revealing a nice little printed note.
In case you can’t make it out, it read:
May today bring you peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are both of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love. It is there for each and every one of us.
Isn’t that sweet? I dunno if it’s leftover pregnancy hormones or what, but it totally made me tear up. Because it’s exactly how we feel. Like we’re exactly where we’re meant to be. How cool are the past owners of our house for hiding this little gem? We think they’re the bee’s knees.
Have you guys ever found any messages in your home? Any initials with hearts scrawled in a kids closet, letters carved into concrete outside, or beer cans and old newspapers in the walls? Somebody tell me you found vintage “men’s magazines” somewhere. Scandalous.
KaDee Cereceres says
I didn’t find note but I did leave something in our house we left. When we retiled the shower with slate, in the upper corner I used a utility knife to carve a heart and our initials in the slate before I sealed it. That way we will always be a part of our old home. small and difficult to notice but romantic!!
Kyle says
Well, it wasn’t my house but I was rebuilding a house in Appalachia and found in one of the badly deteriorated walls a prosthetic leg and literally hundreds of men’s magazines from as early as the 50s all the way through the early 90s. Buried in the back yard (we were digging the house out of the side of a hill that was coming down on it) were tons of old soda cans, apothecary bottles and jars, a hub cap, and even an old car door.
Jennifer says
When we ripped down the old ceiling in the basement a 28 year old bottle (the mfg. year was on the bottle) of RUM came crashing down…we can’t figure out if it was the then teenagers of the original owners we bought from stash…or if maybe the Mom had a secret stash to retreat to when her teenagers drove her crazy perhaps? At any rate, we had a good laugh when we realized what it was. Thank goodness the bottle did break all over the place when it did drop down.
jen says
I loved reading these comments. I’ve always been inclined to leave something behind but I never knew so many did! We had to replace sheetrock due to a leaking drain pipe in our closet.. I wanted to leave something inside the wall but my husband told me not to! I don’t know why I listen to him. When we were kids my dad made a footing for our deck steps and all of our names and the dog’s paw print are embedded along the edge. I am currently trying to think of things to leave with this house.. maybe a packet of pictures of the house and grounds as it was when we lived here. It was only a year old when we bought it, and the previous owners barely had time to get settled before they had to sell it, so I didn’t get to find anything good. Hopefully our next house has some kind of hidden treasures!
Dayna says
No message, but behind a cabinet that we were updating was a calendar from 1934, the year our house was built!
crib tales says
in our first home, a 1934 hours in Seattle, we found some old newspapers in the attic. The hot topic was McCarthy, so that was pretty interesting. The newspapers were wrapped around an old urn/tea pot thing. Totally cool find.
Our current home is just 10 years old but the little boy who lived here before liked to write his name in unsuspecting places. “Jack” is scrawled on blinds, walls, mouldings, etc. I thought at first it was my son, Jackson, who had done it, but realized it wasn’t his handwriting and they were too plentiful for him to have done in such a short time span. P
bklyn76 says
we currently rent our friend’s childhood home and found a few *men’s magazines, circa 1975! :)
Jess says
I’m still renting, but when my friend and her boyfriend moved into their house they found knives all over the place! They were mostly tucked up under the kitchen cabinets and drawers. I think they said an older lady lived there before them, so maybe she just wanted the protection?
Amanda says
that. is. amazing. I can’t wait to move out of our home so we can leave a letter like this! :)
Jennifer says
Stuck in the unfinished basement rafters, we found a photo of a naked woman taken sometime in the 70s.
Katherine says
I think you just found your starting point for the bathroom changes. The sentimental note deserves to be framed and hung somewhere in the new bath.
Just for the record :: I too would have had a few tears at reading the note.
Suzanne says
We live in a house built in 1907. We’ve been renovating it slowly over the past 13 years and have found a few things from past owners. In the attic was an old newspaper from 1934 which makes for some pretty interesting reading. We also found a jar with a note in it left in the wall of the bathroom by the previous owners. They had renovated the bathroom. It’s a sad note, as one of the owners had been diagnosed with aids and was dying in a hospice. We had an inkling about this when we bought the house, so it wasn’t a shock. It goes on to talk about the renovation, and how much love and thought the owners had put into it. Unfortunately, as you can guess, we had to remodel the bathroom. We added another note to the jar and put it back in the wall for some other person to find one day. We also let the kids draw on the drywall before we put the beadboard up. We also found a large tin buried in the plaster above the fireplace. Unfortunately there wasn’t any hidden treasure in it!
Melanie says
Hi-
Wonderful message in the note, and cool that you found it. You might want to consider framing it .
Question: I have been reading your blog for a few weeks now and have a couple of questions-
This house seems ultra clean. Was it, or did you clean it somehow? Was the cleanliness an aspect of purchasing? It sure does make for a beautiful aesthetic to your blog.
Also, did you have a hard time letting go of the other house…seems like when you put your blood , sweat, and tears in something that it is a part of you.
Thanks
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Melanie,
The house was very clean but honestly we can see past a mess so it wouldn’t have kept us from falling in love with the layout, style, potential, etc. And as for leaving our first house, it was definitely bittersweet – but we were so excited about our next house and all of the adventures ahead of us that we didn’t really get very sad closing that door. You know how they say when one door closes, another one opens? We felt that way for sure!
xo,
s
Shar Y says
I go to Cape Cod every year for vacation. I always stay at the same place and even rent the same cottage. My friend told me about the place years ago (19) as it was a place she and her hubs go to. She would hide notes and sometimes I would find them. I always try to hide a note somewhere that some other vacationer will find. It is really fun to find this kind of thing. Yours was really great.
Kristin says
We totally did find a HUGE stack of mens mags in our garage when we moved into a house last year, after the movers got everything in, they were gone. All except a couple of the renew issues. Sort of wonder what my mom is thinking if my hubs now. The previous owner had passed away & was in his late 80’s so it was lots if mags.
Jessi says
The other day my hubby had to tear out one of the tile walls in our shower, and behind the wall he found a huge stack of old envelopes + letters mailed to our address from IBM. There were dozens of them, and all of them referenced “the enclosed stock certificate.” We got all excited until we realized that every single certificate had been removed, and it was just envelopes and letters! Added a little extra fun to a tedious shower remodel, though! ;)
Elizabeth says
Love it! It isn’t too over the top sappy or anything, just perfect!! You should put it in a cool frame and display it in the bathroom.
emily @ thirtyeight20 says
What a sweet find! We didn’t find any time capsules or anything, but we did find SO much other stuff in our house, which was built in the 1880s. (A stash of men’s magazines from the early 1990s, tucked under the attic stairs, was actually one of the very first discoveries!!!!)
We found a newspaper from the 1920s in the kitchen wall, dozens and dozens of old medicine bottles (some actually worth some $$) under the kitchen floor, an old brass key that I had cleaned and polished and now wear as a necklace, some really old shoes and defunct pocket watches… the list goes on!
The creepiest thing we found was an old staircase that had been enclosed in a wall as dead space. The stairs has been rerouted sometime probably in the early to mid 1900s, and the owners at the time chose to leave the old set in place and just cover them up. I was so happy when we knocked them down! We gained that extra space, and we got rid of that haunted old staircase!
Brie S. says
I have a question for you guys: did you tell the new owners of your home about your blog and where to find it so they could see all the work you did on the house? What about your new house, did you tell the former owners about your blog? Just curious.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Brie,
Yup, we disclosed the blog to the buyers of our house (they weren’t readers prior to making an offer and we’re not sure if they read now). As for the sellers of our current house, they knew of our blog and have fun following along! Which thrills us to no end (glad they’re excited to see what we’re up to instead of sad or something like that!).
xo,
s
Stephanie says
Not exactly a ‘house-find’ but my great-aunt found a news paper from the time of Lincoln’s assassination behind a very old grandfather clock used as some sort of padding for the back. She put it back and vowed to never touch it again.
Jennifer says
I see everyone has found “men’s magazines” so my story is nothing special, but yes, we did find some when we tore out our bathroom. They were from the 70’s which was probably the last time the bathroom had been touched. They were stashed in the wall, behind the plaster & lathe.
~~Rhonda says
Always fun to find a treasure! We have been working on this old house (built in 1867) since 1994. We have found lots of little bits and pieces, dishes, bottles, glassware, toys, etc. And did find a note from the previous owners in the upstairs bath, left in the wall when they renovated the bath that had been built in the end of the hall in 1922. We still have the note, of course! And we found messages written by children from the past on the bedroom floors, in the attic and on the basement walls. :) When we remodeled the enclosed upstairs porch (which had been turned into a bedroom at some point)and made it my craft room, we let our daughter draw and write all over the (originally outside) wall that was being framed out. Someday, someone may tear all that out and find our own little treasure. :) ~~Rhonda
Lyndsey says
Our home is a 50s ranch with lotsa built-ins. All the woodwork, including the built-ins, had been freshly painted white before we moved in. All except for one strip. Hidden behind the 5-ft door is bank of built-in drawers. The inside of the door has decades of growing up measurements of all the kids who were raised in our home. We love it and could never paint over it. Of course, it now includes the measurements we’ve added, too.
Gretchen says
We found a vintage “men’s magazine” !!! One from the 70’s “Man’s Delight”. We also found another totally inappropriate bunch of “goodies” – clippings of man parts from porno mags, stashed in the sleeve of an old Dolly Parton record!! Hilarious!
Tori Dog Runs says
While renovating our kitchen, we found a message in a bottle from the owners who lived in our house before the folks we purchased it from. When we removed the old counter tops, we thought someone had thrown trash behind one of the cabinets. Turned out to be a bottle with a sweet note and family photo from some previous owners. Was a nice surprise. I blogged about it, http://toridogruns.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/message-in-a-bottle/
Love your blog. You guys motivate me to keep at my own home renovations.
carolinaheartstrings says
That is such an amazing note and such a cool idea. I plan on doing that if and when I ever move from my present residence. It would also be fun to burying some sort of “time capsule”.
Christine says
The house we live in was built just after WWII. The original builder of the home and his wife lived here with their 4 children for over 40 years. The kid’s names are etched in the concrete floor of our garage. We also found a handmade telescope in our attic that the dad used in his observatory that used to be in our backyard. Newspapers from the late 40’s insulate our pipes and walls – it makes for fascinating reading!
Christie says
Fun find! My parents found something fun in their house (built in the 1920’s): 2 antique plates, a silver platter, and a glass platter hidden in the walls when they went to add an addition to the house! I kid you not. We think they were put there during the depression. Who knows :)
Rachelle says
I love the note you found! As an army brat, we moved every 2-3 years when I was a kid. Starting from when I was around eight years old, I would write my name and the date in a hard to see spot whenever we moved. I was always sad to leave, and wanted to leave something of myself behind. Fortunately I was also always glad to be in the new place once the transition was complete.
HannahRuthie says
When I was a kid, my parents stripped the (many) layers from the walls of my bedroom. The house was built in the late 1800’s, and it was so cool to see what we assume was the worker’s graffiti all over the plaster.
In our house now, my kiddos found a tackle box behind a ponytail palm tree. The tree had actually grown partially over the top of the box, which meant we had to excavate to get it loose. Inside was the previous owner’s son’s army man collection, which we quickly adopted! The boys thought it was pretty cool…
windylou says
There are cussin words under the paint in our kitchen, and a family love note under the paint in the hallway.
We decided to let the kids get the bad words out in a controlled environment to take some of the mystery out of it.
Also, in the concrete flooring of our basement are the original owners’ kids names (we are the second owners)
Wynnie says
I lived in my grandparents home for a year and my husband was trying to fix a old bathroom light fixture. Inside the wall, like deep in the wall he pulled out an old newspaper. It was something my grandfather had put there with his name and my grandmothers and my fathers name. It was from 1947. Pretty neat. We showed it to my father and then put it back and added one with my little families names.
Jen says
How delightful! Hmmm….I might have to leave a note somewhere in our home, too, for the next owner. I love reading all the stories in the comments, too!
Christina says
My husband and I are only the second owners of our 1935 house (we bought from the estate of the original owners) and we’ve found all sorts of interesting things that were left behind….particularly noteworthy, two (empty) wooden boxes labeled “Embalming Fluid” in our garage! And a pile of old gold coins and medallions in the basement – our own ‘buried treasure’. :)
Allison says
The previous owners carved “John loves Sandra” in our driveway. Since my husband’s name is John I just tell everyone that Sandra is his ex. Hee hee!
Sarah says
There is a note scratched into the concrete in my garage that says “somebody loves you”…I wish I could take a picture to share, but right now that side of my garage is sadly full and it would take me far too long to clear it up…but perhaps when it’s cleared I’ll dig this post back up and post ;)
Shannon says
Yes! In the garage right after we moved in I found three hand prints with initials in the concrete. It made me so happy I started crying because the handprints were two parents and a little kid, like my husband, son and I! (Also the people that we bought the house from were a mean old bitter couple, so it made me happy that when the house was built and the concrete was poured that a family had lived there!)
stacey says
No notes here, but I grew up with those Bertoia chairs and they are massively UN comfortable!
Christine says
We left a beer can and a note about how we think we used too many screws behind the drywall we put up when we remodeled our bathroom.
Dana says
Our home was built in the 1890’s, and for the last many years has been used as a rental property and seen much neglect. We have been renovating it room by room over the last couple years, and have so far found fairly normal stuff. Newspaper stuffed in the walls, some old mail and bills, kids toys that had fallen into duct work…
The not so normal: adult videos stuffed under the carpet, “pimp” spraypainted throughout the cellar basement, loveletters from a girlfriend to her incarcerated boyfriend that were never sent, and knives! Everywhere! In the walls, in the floors, out in the yard, in the shed…
If this house could talk, I’m sure there would be some crazy stories to share.
Reenie says
I haven’t found a note yet….but me and 3 of my friends just scraped off the 3 layers of wallpaper with paint over it in my dining room. We only did the top half, because I am putting up beadboard on the lower half. I had each of the girls and myself wrote a lil note on the bottom half….for any future owners. I hope they never take of the beadboard…ha!!! They will not like what they see underneath.
Jamie says
You guys definitely should frame that and keep it in that bathroom! Very sweet!
nicole @ our three reasons says
how incredibly sweet is that!? i would have totally teared up too. :) how fun!!
Misty says
Ok, I know this is insanely silly, but…
In that first picture, the framed art looks precariously perched on the back of the toilet. The OCD is me realllllly wants to push it more to the center!!! lol
Marie-Journey to Body Zen says
That is so cool! I want to leave a note in my house now :)
Morgan G says
So it wasn’t exactly a secret or hidden, but my grandfather-in-law, who passed away before I met my husband, had a serious man cave at his cabin in Lake Tahoe. He had every tool imaginable for repairs, leatherworking and whitling. And the walls? They were plastered with pinups from the 50s and 60s. Classic.
theretiredmama says
We had a water leak in the home our children grew up in. We could not afford to replace the carpet so we let my teenage daughters bedroom floor remain just the concrete slab. I allowed her to draw with markers on the floor and let all of her friends sign and write quotes, poetry, jokes whatever on her floor. My mother wrote on it “Listen to your mother, I taught her well.” We installed carpet before putting the house on the market. What a surprise when the next owners decide to replace the carpet!
Adrianne says
What a beautifully written note! I saw someone else commented on why the May was highlighted in blue. I wonder if it was written in the month of May because the first line says “May today” written in blue and then in the rest of the note only “May” is written in blue. Wouldn’t it be cool if it was some type of riddle that led you to yet another note? Sorry, that’s my Nicholas Cage in National Treasure side peaking out :)
Happy painting!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Adrianne,
Hahah, now that would be AWESOME! Now we just have to steal the Declaration Of Independence…
xo,
s
cindy says
While painting a closet in our “new” old home, we found an adult VHS tape titled “Six Swedes and a Pump” hidden above the inside door molding. We naturally needed to watch it for archeological purposes. :) BTW, we bought the house from a minister and his wife in their 70’s. No judgement, I’m just sayin’. lol
kodie says
when i redid the guest room in my 1955 rancher, i painted mine and my husband’s initials in a heart and the date in primer before i wallpapered. 7 years later, i took down the wallpaper so i could redo the room for my daughter and it was so fun to see what i had done.
after removing a layer of paneling and a layer of wallpaper by our front door, we also found random measurements and the name of the wood stain that was used on all the trim in the house written in pencil on the sheetrock.
we also found a ton of old beer bottle caps under the built in bar in the basement. they were so cool, i made them into magnets for the bar fridge.