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.
Steph at Modern Parents Messy Kids says
Hidden house note karma at work – cool :)
Erika says
Ha! What a sweet note. In our first home we found a bunch of empty liquor bottles in the crawl space. We don’t know if someone was hiding a drinking problem, or what, but it always made us wonder and snicker a little. One thing we did not find in our 1962 gem was hardly any dirt under the old carpet when we tore it out. The past owners must have been total clean freaks. I know this sounds weird, but it was a very settling feeling to know that the house was not all “skeevy” as Teresa Guidice would say from the old owner’s funk.
Ashley says
When we moved in to our townhome we found a cake pan shaped like the male genitalia shoved back in the corner of one our cabinets. We’ve used it a few times for parties and it is a big hit!
We’ll definitely be leaving it for the next people to find as well.
Kim Amos says
My husband and I bought the family home from his father. My husband used to play with his Star Wars figurines in the back yard. According to him we, our future children, or a future owner of our home, may find a Storm Trooper burried in the backyard somewhere.
Heather Beals says
How incredibly cool! We actually just found an entire box of love letters a few weeks ago hidden under a floor board in our attic. It was so neat going through all of them and guessing what the former owners were like.
Suzanne says
What a wonderful note to find! Three years ago, we purchased a home owned by some empty-nesters who had lived in the house for 30 years. There was wallpaper everywhere…some still exists…ugh! (Actually, one room has a teal wallpaper similar to one of the colors you guys are using in your home. I’m leaving it for now because I love that color, too! Tough part is keeping the kids from peeling at the loose edges…) I love stripping the wallpaper because I have found all kinds of notes scrawled on the drywall…”so-and-so loves so-and-so”, “so-and-so was here”, various other notes, and evidence of locations of former doorways(the house had a major remodel in 1986). It makes me wonder what the house looked like before the big addition…so mysterious! I almost feel a little regretful when painting over all of these clues to the house’s history. I am trying to remember to take pictures so that someday I can make a scrapbook that will go with the house so the future owners will know what I have discovered. Oh, and my husband found a marijuana pipe in the drop ceiling of the former owner’s electronics workshop in the basement…very scandalous, if you ask me!
Janette the 2 seasons says
Hello from Laos,
We at http://www.the2seasons.com are here in a Laotian village building a school. Follow our progress daily.
kjpugs says
We moved into a new house when I was in 6th grade and found something in my closet… when we moved in there was a BLACK VELVET AND NEON “The Doors” poster and behind it were love notes two people were writing to each other! It was a tiny house and we moved after only 10 months to a larger one, so I don’t remember what happened to them. But it was so random and bizarre!
liso. says
My husband’s family lived in “the country house” while he was very little, until about five. I guess they did some renovations way back then, and his Mom & Dad, young and in love, painted a bright yellow B&B inside a heart with an arrow behind some framing. Fast forward 30ish years, and his sister went by and met the folks who live there now. When THEY went through and reno-ed, they found the heart, along with tons of little notes the seven kids had written on the walls in the corners of the closets.
They had taken a picture, so we got a copy, and gave it to B&B for an anniversary present two years ago… I just love imagining their family, so young… and so 70s living in that house!
Lisa T. says
You won’t believe this, but I just typed that EXACT message today to place on near my desk at work. I received a forwarded email with that message earlier this week and thought it pretty much said it all. To read it on your post gave me chills.
Love you guys, look forward to your posts daily, and love watching your new house become a Petersik home!
jen says
Scandalous … We were replacing the insulation in the crawl space of our daughter’s room and found a “For Men Only” magazine from the 50s! It was so old and dry that we had to put in the bathroom for the steam to allow it to be opened. Sad to say it wasn’t very scandalous at all but I am sure it was for its time otherwise it wouldn’t have been hidden in a crawl space right ;)
Betty says
How cool! We haven’t found any notes in our home…but we did find a whole drawer full of love/dream notes at a local restaurant…it’s so fun having those sorts of connections with people you don’t even know!
erisraven says
It’s a quote from St. Teresa of Avila.
Andrea Surrey says
At our first house, during some remodeling, the workers found some old Playboys tucked up in the basement ceiling. They tried to tell me they were my husband’s, but they were from the 70s and we had only lived there since 1998 (lucky for him).
Melissa says
My parents have a home that was built in the 1800’s. They bought the house in the late 70’s and pretty much gutted it completely. In the process, they found tons of stuff hidden in the walls including old clothes (bras included!), an old cow bell, several old glass jars, and a small tin containing a mysterious blue powder. They’re not sure how old the stuff is, but it looks like it has been there for a VERY long time. They saved all the items – minus the clothing since it was in pretty bad shape – and now have them on dispaly in a curiou cabinet in their living room. It’s like a mini museum about the history of their house :)
LindseyR says
love the note (and might use if if I have to ever called upon to give a toast at a celebration!) Would love to see you guys do something crafty with it and have a place to display it (even if you retype it all out into an artsy font)
Emily says
I found a child’s sized work boot in my crawl space and a odd assortment of toys in my attic. Not nearly as endearing as the note you found. For some reason I just can not part with the tiny little work boot and it has a place of prominence in my living room display shelves.
Andrea DePew says
While cleaning out my grandmother house (where my dad also grew up) we found some of his old naughty magazines.. the 70’s were creepy.. One scandalous picture featured a uhm.. bush cleaning. Ahaha..
Amy R says
The owners of our house before us also lived here 22 year, so we excpected to find all kinds of things, and still do! The weirdest one: an envelope in the wall of the basement heater room, containing an expired drivers license, several social security pay stubs, and an electic bill from the early 80’s. It wasn’t the name of the previous owners either…which is the really weird part!
Megan says
We totally found men’s magazines! When we tore down our kitchen ceiling to replace it, we found a stash of old Penthouse magazines. They were from the mid-90s, so not exactly vintage, but still a crazy find. And what made it even better was that the previous (and original) owner of the house is now our next door neighbor!
Megan says
My brother and sister in law just finished completely re-doing a pioneer home (built around 1860s) in Utah, and they found old leather shoes in the wall! Their builder said that people used to put them in for good luck. So my brother in law, who has a prosthetic leg, left one of his old legs in the new wall as well as a couple of their shoes for someone else to discover in 150 years.
Lesley says
When our home was being inspected before purchase, the inspector found newspaper clippings in the attic from August 1952. I thought this was a fun find since my mom was born in the same month and year. I hope to frame a few of the pieces.
Jordan G says
Sweet!
This note wasn’t hidden away or anything, but the previous owner’s 7 yr old daughter left a note on the kitchen counter. It went like this: “I really really love this house. I didn’t at first but I do now. My room is the pink one with the butterflies. I have really good handwriting. Bye Bye.”
So precious.
Laurie says
Yo! MTV Cribs, spray painted larger than life inthe garage wall behind a shelving unit.
James says
My last house had a small Childs footprint in the concrete path to the front door . All the money in the world couldn’t have made me replace that path…..made me smile every time I walked in the front door. In our current house , we found a plastic Saint Joseph burried in the flower bed.
robyn says
I knocked down a bathroom wall and found a report card from 1910–with a whole lot of failing marks. I would have hidden that in the wall, too!
Sarah says
Friends of ours were redoing their basement and found the previous owners, um, DIY adult video and photo collection. As if it’s not disturbing enough just to find that, you have to decide whether to return it or just pretend it never happened! Wouldn’t someone want that back just to know it was safe?
T. says
When my husband’s parents died and we sold their house (the house my hubby had grown up in), he told me later that he hid a letter somewhere in the basement for some future owner to find.
When I was a kid my parents let us write all over the floor when we had carpeting replaced. When my husband and I had carpeting replaced in the one room in our home that is not hardwood floors, we let our kids do the same.
We did find all kinds of things in the attic of our house: Teen Beat magazines, rock posters from the 70s, an old wooden potty chair… We also found legos in the heat duct! We have done lots of remodeling to our house over the years, and we’ve always written our names on studs or joists. When we re-did our kithen, the new sink was delivered with our name written in big bold letters on the exterior of it, which we thought was awesome!
I love living in a house with a history.
Jamie says
Oh. How exciting. So far in my house I have found cigarette wrappers and a vintage can of gear grease as well as the original owners names and the date the concrete was poured in our walkway. We also discovered that our cabinets were originally painted yellow with the wildest linoleum floor in history. Scary stuff. As for us, whoever buys our house will find all of our names in the concrete floor of the shed we built.
tamara@etcetorize says
I pulled up the carpet in my bedroom and found an envelope with 17 crips one dollar bills inside. The outside of the envelope said “Smoking money”. It’s a mystery to me, maybe someone lost a bet??? I’m not sure.
Dawn T. says
I’m so excited for you! We have left a “time capsule” in each of our homes, filled with current magazines and a letter from our family. When we do major renos, we also staple our favorite scriptures inside the walls. I hope we are lucky enough to find something someday, too!
Rosemary says
My dad built the house I grew up in. Along the way, he also built a few sets of built-in bookshelves (and countless other projects). Each time he built a bookcase, we would all run to our rooms to find a little gem we could do without. If someone ever rips them out, they’ll find five dollar bills, rubber snakes, smurf figurines, a lot of loose change, and a few little “you found me!” notes.
Heather says
Totally found a Playboy with Jessica Alba on the front cover in one of the kitchen cabinets of the foreclosed home we bought from the bank back in 2008. Completely scandalous. :)
Becky@Organizing Made Fun says
We found a note behind the mirror in our kids bathroom when we were re-doing the plumbing. It read something like this {and included pictures}:
My Dad and I remodeled this bathroom in May 1971. I am eight years old and go to Emerson Elementary School {our kids’ school}. Lee Parons
Isn’t that sweet? The owners before us lived here 30 years and never really were great DIYers. I had their new address and took a picture of the note and mailed it to them. They had never seen it before and it was there before they lived here!!
Becky B.
http://www.organizingmadefun.blogspot.com
Organizing Made Fun
Jessica says
How cute! We haven’t found anything in this house (although the owner did leave every single picture ever taken of the house–it’s kind of shocking how much is the same as when it was built 40 years ago) but in a previous rental, I was cleaning the top of the kitchen cabinets and found “French letters” and lubricant for a certain entrance. I was pretty grossed out and they went right into the trash.
We moved out of the house I grew up in when I was 13. I was getting married in my hometown almost a decade later and the house was for sale, so I stopped and asked the owner if I could get a quick tour. I saw the door frame where we’d put our height measurements still in the same condition. He said “We love looking at this, we couldn’t bear to paint over it.” It made me smile. I have no idea if it’s still there as it’s been sold at least once since then. It’s a nice thought that it might still be there, though.
Anita K says
Get this- when we bought our house, I found stuffed to the side in a bathroom drawer, a note. It was from one man’s wife to his mistress, telling her off. She went on about how her husband decided to stay with her, and rubbed her face in that pretty good! Crazy… and it must’ve been the owner before the one we bought it from, because the names were not theirs.
So funny, I felt like I had just opened the intimate details of someone else’s life!
Andrea @ NickelByNickel.com says
hah, cool is that huh, finding stuff in your house! I just blogged about this a little while ago. I’ve found some pretty cool things so far; an old war-time canning manual from the second world war – completely intact (I’d attach pics if I could) an inkwell and partial container, an old cigarette pack circa 1940? not sure, a partial newspaper from 1951 with some really creepy old-bra ads and also an old photo under the kitchen lino of a woman and children. I’m really curious if we’ll find anything else when we rip out the bathroom in the spring!
Lacey says
No notes per se, but in my childhood home the original owners (who had built the thing from a Sears-Roebuck kit in 1900) used to scrawl things all over the basement. The little girl, Mary Jane, had practiced her signature on the wall leading down to the basement, and when we were kids my sister and I penciled ours in next to hers for posterity’s sake, lol.
Lauren says
My parents rented a very old farmhouse for a year while renovating a house. I was about 12 years old and it was our family’s first foray into country living after years and years in the city (richmond, actually) The house had all sorts of creepy things happen while we lived there, and I was convinced it was haunted. When we moved out I left a note tucked into the side of the window saying the house was haunted. I remember putting my phone number in it, “in case they had any questions” then realizing what a stupid idea that was. I lived in fear that someone would actually call, and thank god they didn’t because my parents would never have let me live that one down.
Grace says
Hello YHL: When we moved in to my childhood home there was this gigantic poster with this spooky guy dressed as a fortune teller. It said “The Great Alexander” on it and it always scared me so I avoided the basement at all costs. We finally put it out on the curb- quite a task since it was at least six feet tall. Our neighbors across the street held a circus every year for the kids on our block so they took it to make the circus a little more festive. When they moved a few years later they put it out on the curb and our next door neighbors couldn’t bear to see it junked. They took it to Antiques Road Show when it came through Milwaukee and whaddaya know it was worth 700-800 buckeroos. Luckily, there was a collector of the posters who wanted to buy it. The money went to our annual block party. A really nice story all the way around. Someone did a video about that whole chain of events. I should ask someone on the block to take a look at it. On another topic, I’m a Montessori kid, too! Highly recommended (if it’s a legit school. Some call themselves Montessori school. Ask where the teachers were trained!)
Valerie H says
I’m actually able to give you guys what you want. Two years back, we moved into a rental home (with basement — partially unfinished) in West Valley, Utah.
There was a bathroom in the basement that was working but had no ceiling (just rafters). My kitten climbed up into the rafters and my partner climbed on the sink to fetch her. He found two “vintage” (we’re talking 70’s) men’s magazines tucked far back along the seam of the wall.
All we can come up with was the previous owner had a teenage son or perhaps a disapproving wife and hid his “stash” in the rafter downstairs.
It brought a few laughs and then was disposed as we had a very curious toddler roaming about.
Amy says
So far, we haven’t found anything special inside the house! But outside, when we recently had our retaining wall redone, we found old soda and beer cans from at least 10+ years ago. I don’t know if it was the workers who were creating the original retaining wall or if it was previous owners burying their trash. Apparently you used to be able to bury your trash but I did not realize that. I still think it was whoever was building the retaining wall and just did not want to go throw away the items in their truck so they buried it!
Laura says
Hi guys I’ve been following YHL for a while now but never commented. We live in Brisbane, Australia and as you might know have just experienced severe flooding… Long story short we’ve had to rip the plasterboard out of the area of our house that got flooded… And in the process of scrubbing mud we found two little baby bath squirt toys hidden in the wall!! It was a cute surprise amongst what has been a upsetting couple of weeks.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Laura,
We’re so sorry about the devastating flooding that you guys are dealing with our there, but the bath squirt toys sound like such a sweet little surprise. Glad they were there to bring a smile when you needed one! You’re in our thoughts.
xo,
s
susan says
What a wonderful gift you received. What a wonderful gift I received because you decided to post it. Thank you…susan
Yellow Bird says
Our house was built in 1950 and we have found 2 treasures. One was in the heating duct. I pulled off the cover to vacuum and found an infant sized silver spoon.
The other was on the fuse box. It had each room labeled: Tommy’s room, sewing room, etc. So of course, that was our joke for a while. Still hoping to find some sort of hidden note somewhere.
Colleen says
That is very sweet that you found a note :) It’s a beautiful message too.
Alie says
My husband and I are poor college students and our first apartment together was a basement. The young college couple (just like us) living upstairs showed us several places in our house where they’d literally pass notes through holes in the ceiling! Talk about a dumpy house!
Jan says
In the 80’s, my husband accepted a part-time position in a church in mid-coast Maine. With the move being as crazy and unexpected as it was, we were scrambling to find a new home. One very snowy February day, we found it. It was another beautiful 150 yr old home in need of a lot of work. Two wedding maples graced the path leading up to the front door. Mrs. Payson, the 83 yr old woman who’d lived in the house for over fifty years was shoveling the driveway when we drove in. Rumor had it that her husband, a local pharmacist, was a bootlegger during the days of prohibition. A few years after moving in, my dad was doing some repair work in the cellar. He had to pull down some old lathing on the ceiling. After just a few tugs, there was a mighty crash of glass and suspicious smelling amber liquid splattered and spread across the dirty cellar floor. I guess there was some truth to the rumors! We found his stash of hooch. :)
http://humbleofferings-jdm.blogspot.com/2010/11/house-dreams.html
Julie says
Our house was built in the 50’s and had some ugly green cafeteria flooring and wood paneling in the family room. We took pictures and posted them inside the walls along with a note when we renovated last April. We have found lots of children’s toys the yard as well of lots of bad DIY jobs inside the house. The closet door of one room had “i love will” scratched in it several times. We plan on leaving a note in each room we renovate.
Melinda says
My cousin completely gutted and rebuilt his house from the ground up homself. As one of the “final touches” to the house, he did actually include all of the 365 pin-up girls for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit daily calendar right behind the built in medicine cabinets. Pretty hilarious!