From the papers hidden behind our old kitchen cabinets to the vintage users manual for our old dryer, we still get excited when we discover markers of home’s past. So check out this little gem that we (literally) unearthed in the front yard a few weekends ago while planting some bushes:
It’s an old milk bottle cap from back in the day when milk was delivered to your doorstep. It paints such a quaint little Pleasantville picture of our neighborhood. We love how it’s even printed with “Monday” on the bottom to indicate the delivery date (or maybe the day it goes bad?). And in scouring the net for some indication of what year it might be from, I stumbled on this funny piece of our milkcap’s family tree – the Richmond Dairy building:
It turns out our little milk cap hails from here. Sherry and I had driven by this building in Richmond’s Jackson Ward neighborhood before, but didn’t immediately connect it to our newly discovered treasure (thanks internet!). The Richmond Dairy building is now the Richmond Dairy Apartments, so if you’re looking for a unique address you can always try to grab one of the units in the four 16-foot milk bottles on each corner. Oh how we’d love to check out the interior of one of those guys…
‘Til then, we’re trying to figure out what to do with our milkcap. We’re thinking it might look fun in a small shadow box in the kitchen (maybe on some textured linen for a shabby and worn effect). Any other ideas? Any other good “ancient treasure” discovery stories from your own home? Tell us all about it.
Image courtesy of rvaphotodude’s Flickr stream.
Sandra says
When we first moved in and cleaned out our garage, still littered with a lot of junk from the previous owners, we discovered a miniature medieval-esque suit of armor (around four feet tall), dented and rusty in spots, with “Mexico” not-so-subtly written on one of the armored gloves.
Something about it is really neat – maybe imagining the first owners going through the trouble of bringing it back from a vacation, then leaving it on the front porch to get rained on for years – and we’re still trying to figure out how to use it.
Liz says
I love finding little pieces of a home’s history! We found an old manual for the original oven in our home: http://itsgreattobehome.net/2009/03/29/oven-lovin/. Too fun!
Amy says
i have a story, but i don’t think it is quite as “pleasantville” as yours…when our electrician was adding recessed lighting to our living room a few weeks ago, he found something in the floor joists overhead: a really, really old empty beer can. i’ve never seen a can like that before. the pop top looked really different from the tops on today’s cans.
milk or beer…beverage of choice i guess! ha!
Eva says
We found some amazing pieces of our home’s long history while renovating. Some of the highlights are- A 1938 New Jersey Drivers License, A book check out of a Philadelphia library in 1928 (that was clearly never returned), WWII love letter and a box full of money!
We’re displaying some of the old “health tonic” bottles and books on shelves around the house. Other items we’re planning on donating to our towns historical society.
Elizabeth says
Wow, that’s a great find!
A friend was ripping out walls in her bedroom and behind the drywall found a pair of ladies underwear and a children’s juice cup.
The most I’ve found so far was a Pokemon card.
Beth says
That’s great! The only thing I’ve found in my old home is layers and layers of retro wallpaper (which I secretly LOVE)….congrats on the find!
Kate at Centsational Girl says
You are right – that is a treasure ! I love this story.
All I ever found in my backyard was an old beer bottle, a Budweiser. Your bottle cap is way cooler. I’m so jealous. :-)
Stephanie says
I’m only 30 and I remember we got milk delivered to our house when I was a kid. We’d have to leave out a cooler with lots of ice so it wouldn’t go bad by the time we got home!
Shannon says
You could hot-glue a magnet to the back and it would look really cute on the fridge.
Alissa says
Hi,
Our first home was a great little cottage built in 1941. When we decided to replace the molding, we found a 1941 penny buried behind the wood. I hope the person who not-so-accidently placed this penny here knows that I found it and have kept it as a memory of our first home. Thanks!
Alissa
Kelly says
We had a built-in buffet in our 1920 craftsman bungalow moved to a different wall in the dining room. We found a number of “treasures” beneath it including pennies from 1909 and 1913, mail from from Golden Gate International Exposition (dated 1939), mail from Denver Typographical Union (Dec 1944) and Young American League Drop Cards. Oh, and “Dylan’s Homework Folder” from November 1997! We plan to put the older items in a shadowbox and leave it in the house whenever we decide to move.
Devin says
Our house (and I’m SOOO not kidding you) was built in 1910, therefore it’s about to celebrate it’s 100th Birthday!! This house has been in my family the entire time it has been on this earth and as my husband and I have done renovations and just cleaning up things, we have found ALL KINDS of cool things on the way. I actually found a piece that went to an old necklace (you know those ovals that have the ivory woman on a pink or black background…) when we were leveling out our floors. We inherited an old phone (I have absolutely NO idea how old it really is!) as well as all of the treasures that are in our shed that we’ve yet to go thru… (We’re eventually going to tear down the shed as it is in pretty bad shape and build a big deck for entertaining!). We also found newspapers (like you guys) when we were doing the floors here… There must’ve been something significant for doing that back then?! lol :)
misty says
we moved into an old house (circa 1797) and find so many things. we have piles of old newspapers from the 20’s onward. when we cleaned out the garage there was a chest full of old flags and old quaker hats and fabric. we donated most of the hats to the historical society and kept the flags to frame. we found an old tin can in the attic (the kind that is the size of a side table) filled with sugar, coffee and flour. we assume it was stashed there during the war. and the most interesting find so far is the large pile of old letters, receipts, photos, etc stashed under the eaves in the attic dating back to the 1820’s. since the house has been in the family for 65 years, all of those letters are written by relatives of my husband! we are planning to get some archival binders and store them so that they can be read.
Jen says
I found a solid marble hand-carved head of Pan buried deep down in my garden in Astoria, Queens!
I’d have never seen it through all the dirt covering it if it hadn’t chosen to rain shortly after unearthing it. We now have it cleaned up and on display….
Sheila H says
We just found a cardboard milk bottle top in our kitchen! My husband researched and just “won” a bottle to match it on EBay. Not sure what we are doing with them yet. We also have found a pin for doll owners from the 40s and we love the headlines on old newspapers we find- “Joe DiMaggio to enlist;wife drops divorce”. The house was built in 1920, but most of our archeology finds date from work done in the 1940s.
:::Lyzz::: says
This story reminds me a little of the show on HGTV “If walls could talk”. I love it!
sammyw says
ditto the magnet idea, super cute :)
Karen says
My husband and I live in a neighborhood not too far from yours, and we love reading your blog, all your fabulous ideas and tips, and recognizing all the local Richmond sites!
Our house is also a 1950s-esque ranch, complete with one entire room in knotty pine wood panels. While renovating our living room (we individually sanded down each orangey-varnished panel and coated with a white-wash, vast improvement), we had to take down crown and bas molding. We found rolled up inspirational/advice articles and columns tucked under the molding. We decided to placate the “House Gods”, and we framed the articles in all their aged glory for display in our newly renovated room. Makes for a very interesting conversation piece! Now the yard is a different story – we have found everything from a flip-flop to trash to a boat anchor!
Thanks again for such a fabulous blog!
Kim Hannemann says
Amy said: “the pop top looked really different from the tops on today’s cans”
I remember when we had to open them with a CAN OPENER! And we LIKED it!
Speaking of milk and expiration/sale dates, check this out:
http://members.cox.net/khannemann/Milk.mp3
Emily says
You might consider digging up a tiny bit around that same spot in the hopes of unearthing more cool stuff. At the turn of the century and on into last century, many people would use the edge of their property lines to dump glass bottles and their lids. They were, I think, called dumping lines or something like that. My husband and I were lucky a few years back when we were still in our apartment, to catch the gleam of a cool glass bottle top when the town was digging up at the edge of a playground. A tiny bit of digging unearthed four or five truly special but small medicine bottles and some bottles of stove oil. They’re now sometimes displayed in our sink window.
Susan says
Last week, we had some workers digging around our foundation to do some extra waterproofing and they found 5 or 6 old glass bottles. I’m thinking they were for liquor (one was clearly labeled “Half Pint”, but they are about the size of a hot sauce bottle. Two of them have Sauer’s Extracts going down the sides of the bottles, and I’ve since learned that Sauer’s has been a Richmond-based company since the 1880’s. I still have them sitting on my kitchen counter, trying to figure out what to do with them. Our house was built in the 40s so I like how they are part of its history. My husband, on the other hand, considers them junk and wants to recycle them. Any ideas?
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Susan,
We love glass bottles! I think you should clean ’em up as well as you can and group them on a tray or a windowsill and use ’em as vases with a few blooms in each one. Adorable. What a great find!
xoxo,
Sherry
amy says
In the house I grew up in and my parents still live in, we’ve actually HIDDEN THINGS ON PURPOSE for future generations/owners to find! In particular, there are a few places in the house my father put up wood panelling. When we were little kids, before he nailed everything into the wall, we took magic markers and drew pictures and our names all over the wall.
Jamie says
My parents have a cottage in their backyard, a little rundown shack of a two bedroom house that my and my brothers lived in during the summers while we were in college. We have been “remodeling” it for several years now (read: project stalled), but while we were ripping out the ceiling panels we found some old folded up newspaper pages that were shoved in there presumably to make something flush. It was pretty cool seeing all the old ads for 50 cent bread and stuff like that. I thought I had pictures but can’t find them.
Jen says
When we moved in we found some really old appliances in our house, which have since been replaced!! Hee hee.
To Karen at 3:32pm: we have a den with that same orangey pine paneling and I want to sand it down so bad. Did you do it by hand? Did it take forever? Do you have a picture you can post?
Stephanie says
I dont have any ‘great finds’ story, although I have really enjoyed reading all the others! But I think putting it in a little frame/shadow box would be so so cute! I would be afraid if it was a magnet, it wouldn’t get the respect it deserves! ;)
jbhat says
That apartment building is a cute as a button. It should advertise vacancies as “Got Space” : )
I found marbles buried in my yard. In random spots, not all in the same place. Weird.
Kellie Alkayam says
My house was built in 1924, and the previous owner (now 95 years-old) bought it with her husband in 1950. When they moved in, they lined the closet shelves with newspaper, and it was still there when I got the keys. She moved to a nursing home, and didn’t need a lot of the things she had acquired over the years, so she left it all for me. Man, it was like a treasure chest of neat old stuff! I had so much fun going through it.
A few weeks ago, I was cleaning the shelves inside an old built-in cabinet in my dining room and found a little glass bottle of white ink still in its cardboard box. It appears to be from the 50’s. I must have missed it when going through the cabinet the first time. I’m hoping to find more as I start landscaping.
foobella says
My parents house is only 2 years old, but the road it’s on is an old one and there is an overgrown spot at the edge of the yard that they’ve been cleaning up. It must have been a spot where people would…um…gather. We’ve found bag loads of old whiskey bottles, schlitz malt liquor bottles, and these http://foobella.blogspot.com/2009/04/things-found-in-dirt.html two circ 1970’s (I think)Pepsi bottles. Every times it rains a few more bottles pop up. I’m just waiting for that revolutionary war trinket to pop up and make us rich.
Liz says
When we cleaned out our attic, we found a whole box of vintage toys from the 50’s. My favorite discovery had to be a set of letters written by a girl who used to live in our house to her fiance, who was shipped off to WW2. They wrote each other while he was away and she was in school … they were so romantic!!
Kara Paslay says
My husband and are renovating our 1936 cottage and we have found some neat stuff, but the coolest has definitely been the newspaper from 1941 (that’s right during WWII) On the last page, there were cartoon drawings with the title “How To Spot A Jap” Crazy huh? No longer politically correct, but still pretty cool!
Carolyne O says
We had a plumber to our home, whose childhood friend grew up in our house. Upon meeting him he said, “I love this house.” I thought he meant my decorating.:)It was awesome to have him walk through our home and give us a “tour” of our home from the 1960s.
YoungHouseLove says
How funny, Carolyne! We had a similar experience with the inspector who looked at our house before closing. He had grown up down the street and was telling all these funny tales of the old owners and what the neighborhood used to be like. Apparently there was almost a tennis court in our backyard.
-John
Tamisha says
A friend of mine in Alexandria found a bunch of condom wrappers when they started renovations.
We haven’t found any really good treasure, but our 1950s rancher was built very close to Civil War battlefields and I find fire pits when I dig in the garden.
We too had one room covered in orangy knotting pine paneling. It was hideous. I washed it down with TSP, lightly sanded with a pole sander, wiped it down with a tac cloth, primed it very well, and then painted it. It’s been up for five or six years now and looks great. We just repainted it in December to put it on the market. You can see it here:
http://nestingpair.blogspot.com/2009/02/bedrooms.html
Tamisha says
I meant to say “very old” condom wrappers from the 1930s, which is pretty cool. New ones would just be weird.
JM says
Amy – I love this idea “In the house I grew up in and my parents still live in, we’ve actually HIDDEN THINGS ON PURPOSE for future generations/owners to find!” How fun!
everyeskimo says
weirdest find ever: a small metal tube with a swastika on it. i can’t even imagine the story behind that. (nor do i particularly want to.)
best finds: a key hole cover with a beautiful patina and a pair of super rusted kid’s scissors. they hang on the inspiration board in my office.
Amanda says
Aww you found a sweet little artifact! My house, which I’m pretty sure used to be a drug house, has some less- sweet things to be found. I found some kind of bill stuffed behind some pipes, and a high-heel shoe and some socks buried in the backyard! The best thing I’ve found though, is an old Jello cookbook. It has such treasures as Tomato Ribbon Loaf and Chili Shrimp Salad (all containing Jello). I’ll have to post some pics to my blog soon, they are hilarious.
Tiffannie says
Like Amy and JM, my family also hid “time capsules whenever my dad did a major renovation (three to date). We included a newspaper, a list of the family’s names and ages and a note from each, money from the current year, a list of the current top 10 movies and songs, and Happy Meal toys (as an example of what kids played with in the mid ’90s). It sounds so lame when I explain it now, but hopefully if/when someone finds them many years from now they’ll think it’s cool…just like the people who dropped the milk top would have thought nothing of it but now we all think it’s neat.
Sophie says
About five years ago, my family decorated our kitchen, which had been the same since they moved in in 1991. When we tore down one of the cupboards, we discovered some papers behind it. It was the original order slip for the kitchen units and counters, and we found out they’d come all the way from Italy at the end of the 70’s.
It was pretty awesome, and we did actually think twice about keeping the units because of their interesting heritage, but alas, we had to replace them. They were super ugly :P
meganjchavz says
we found a skeleton key while digging in the backyard of our 1924 home!
sheri shiflet says
There were four bottles but, one fell down. The Richmond Dairy Company was built in the 1913, if you’d like more information, please feel free to email me.
Sheri
Merideth says
ahhh! this reminds me of the improv show you guys did! loved it!