Old Trash

Owners of old houses know how much fun it is to find the trash from olden days!  It gives a little insight into the people that previously lived in the house.

While we haven't yet found any real treasures, little bits of items have turned up as we've been gardening & cleaning up the yard.  Here and here are things we've found.

And here are the most recent finds since we've been under construction...

Lots of keys!  And I like the itty bitty bottle!

We were originally putting our yard finds in a big display case, but I felt like it was taking up too much room, and didn't have enough stuff in it.

My brother gave me this smaller one, so I've had that out that instead...

That's now getting crowded, so I might need to switch back!

Construction is going full steam- lots of progress to share!

I'll have updates & photos this week!

Under the Back Porch

One of my favorite parts of the demolition is getting to see what's uncovered!

As soon as the demo guys left, Mike & I were out there checking it out!

I am so in love with the stone foundation!  I found it interesting that there were little support walls made out of stone too.  The support wall on the left was made of cement- obviously a later fix.

There was a pile of dirt and rocks that we had fun sifting through.

We put the big rocks aside to use for little garden walls (like we did for my picking garden).

The rocks were really heavy, so Mike got the tractor out to move them.

We were careful to watch for any bits of pottery- and were very excited when we found some!

The terra cotta flower pot wasn't anything great- it probably got kicked under the porch at some point.  

But the little bowl was really neat

It had a "Luxembourg" stamp on the bottom.

 We also found some little pieces of broken dishes.  Some had leaf patterns & flowers.

My favorite of these is the black & gray triangular piece on the bottom.  

It's hard to make out the pattern in the photo, but it has little flowers.

I am very excited to see if we find more when they excavate for the foundation- would love to find an old bottle or something like that!

Yard Sale Finds

I was pretty excited about two items we picked up a couple of yard sales earlier this month!

First is a Jewelry Dresser- 

I've had my eye on one of these for a while, but I didn't want to spend a lot.

Happily, I came across this one- for just $15!

Not sure if I'll end up painting it, or leaving it as is... we'll see!

The next item is one Mike was looking for... 

A display case for items found in the yard with the metal detector. 

(Check out what we've found here!) 

This was originally from Pottery Barn & we paid $10. 

It's pretty big (three feet long, I think?) and can be hung on the wall if we want.  

For now it's on the shelf in the family room.  

We have to find a more permanent place for it...

Catching Up- May edition

Here's another random collection of the little things we've gotten or finished, but weren't big enough to have a whole post of their own.

More planes!
My youngest son has an airplane theme for his room.  The theme was centered around cast iron airplane wall hangings that I found at a church rummage sale.
I found two more of them on Esty!  We already had the yellow one, but the red, white & blue one is really cool.

Here's a picture of them all together:














Found! 
We haven't gotten the chance to use the metal detector that often...
When Mike's parents were here for a visit this spring, his dad had a little fun sweeping the yard.  Check out what he found!

More rusty stuff-
railroad spike and horseshoe

Cameo pin

Mercury Dime

Some kind of tag from 1956
Has town & county printed on it.

Chickens!



They're not cute little chicks anymore!

While still too young to lay eggs, they look like full fledged chickens now!







Look what I won!
Heather at Post Road Vintage had a giveaway, and I won!  I got to choose one of her pretty mason jar soap dispensers.
I had to get the lavender one- it's perfect for our purple bathroom!

Lost & Found

One of the fun things about living in a really old house is finding out about the people who lived there before us.  One way to catch a glimpse of the house's history is through the trash they buried.

Mom & Dad gave us their metal detector to sweep the yard.  Mom had gotten it a few years ago to use in the yard of their 1860 house. 
They found cool things like a monogrammed pin. 
I'd LOVE to find something like that-  The search is on!
It's a challenge to differentiate the beeps... we're still learning!

Some finds are better than others....

So far, we have:

Pulley

-about 20 old-style nails (square heads)

-two horseshoes

-a metal pulley

-various unknown pieces

 

  

  

Here's a pretty cool door lock.  It's in very bad shape, but must have come from somewhere in the house!

Oh, and if you're wondering what they found in the very first photo of this post... it was a NEW screw from the fence Mike recently put up!  Certainly better that we found it this way, instead of one of us stepping on it... but not quite the treasure we were hoping for!

Anyways, we'll let you know if we find anything else interesting!