that's beautiful Iris. At the house in Ponca City Oklahoma are the foot prints of our daughters, back then 2 and 4.

Moved away from there, a few years after they flew the coop so to speak...

Moni

Neat! I actually read a cute story once where a couple was remodeling a bathroom and they found a note in the walls from the former homeowner. It was something along the lines of "Why are you remodeling? Don't you like what WE did?" Or something. It was funny.

What a fun thing to do.

Amylou, that’s so funny.

I have always had people who worked on a house of mine sign a soft metal label that I immured in the walls or in a pour or under flooring. They were typically flattered. No one ever turned me down. I would sign my work and leave a note.

I had a friend who bought a house that had a note on a window (circa 1880) written with the diamond from her engagement ring.

When we remodeled our house a few years ago, we put a "time capsule" in the wall. When we remodeled our old house a few years ago, we found the name and phone number of the person who had done the last remodel. Something along the lines of "for the best service, call Calhoun at 123-456-7890". Except that he had done a pretty bad job on several aspects!! So from then on, anytime something was wrong with the house, we would call it the "Calhoun curse!"

I spent two summers in high school working with a friend for his father, a general contractor, doing manual labor, clean up, and general go-fer work on a number of building sites. Houses and small apartment buildings. At each site, we'd think up funny notes to write on interior 2x4s, such that they would be found should any "down to the studs" remodeling be done. There's no way to know if any were ever found. It was certainly more amusing for us to do (it helped pass the time while doing boring work) than amusing to find. I remember doing it but not what we wrote.

I wrote family recipes on the wood in the attic.

Not exactly the same but.....when one DD was in fifth grade, the teacher had the students write letters to their future selves. She mailed them to the students 10 years later!

It had what things like, "Where will you be and what will you be doing?"

The first surprise was seeing the envelope written in their child's handwriting.

Of course my DD contacted friends from the class and they her comparing notes. A fun project.

But getting back to your question. We had a second home and when we renovated an entire very old newspaper was let in the wall. This same home had a coin from the year the house was built pressed into the cement near the basement stairs.

When we renovated our current kitchen, I put all our initials on the studs.

No we haven't hidden any notes, but we did do this in the lower level garage...

The penny is the year we built the house.

I draw that duck all the time! When I was a kid, I found the touch-up paint for my parents' Dodge Dart (deep teal, if I recall) and started painting a picture with it on the front walk to our house. It stayed there until we moved....

That’s really sweet. We haven’t ourselves, but next to the entry in the garage, a previous owner was tracking the heights of their kids on the drywall. We’ve purposely left it there just in case they were to ever stop by.

I wrote the names of the contractors, both friends of mine, who remodeled my bathroom, on the backs of the baseboard along with the date before they nailed it up. (that was a long sentence!). : )

I’ve done lots of things like this. When I had the kitchen remodeled, I signed my name on the wood base under the granite and hid a time capsule in between some cabinets. Many years ago we put a new roof on the house ourselves. We all signed out names on the wood under the shingles. I forgot all about that. When I had a new roof put on a few years ago, the roofers found our signatures and saved that piece of wood for us.

I also signed my name on the attic rafters when I cleaned it all out to have insulation blown in.

When I traded in my beloved old Honda I out some lucky pennies in it, all heads up!

I also have my kids heights marked on the back of the basement door. I may have to take that door with me to the retirement home some day.

I used to do fund raising for a hospital near me and when we put on a new wing all the staff and our donors signed their names on the first beam.

I never found any messages from previous owners in my house. There was an old hat in the attic and I left it there.

I love that idea! My little children's footprints are in the concrete slab that surrounds our well pump, but we haven't written any notes--yet.

This old house is a hemlock double-plank construction, and some of the earliest owners insulated by stuffing newspaper in the small spaces between the planks. When my son was small he used to carefully remove the newspaper to try to read it. Most crumbled in his hands, but he was able to smooth one large piece. It was from a newspaper called The Homestead, dated 1897, and had a lot of small-town Massachusetts (I live in PA) social news: "Dr. H. A. Smith has purchased a new driving horse," etc. We were fascinated.

These are fun stories. We haven't done anything similar, but my neighbors noted the date by embedding pennies in a corner of wet cement when they poured the walkways around their home.

I'm surprised none others have but put in Scripture, a favorite to use is Joshua 24:15 "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord." A friend had each of the contractor's employees put their favorite scripture in the walls.

Growing up, my Dad put our names on a cement step he poured that went out to the backyard of our home. I always loved seeing that and would guess it's still there two owners later.

When we were building our current home, I asked that the shower head in our MB be lowered, as I knew we'd have a handheld shower head and I couldn't reach it where it was plumbed. Found this note that was written on the studs. I'm sure whenever the bathroom is remodeled down the road, this will explain why the shower is at the height it's at.

Ha ha. Short buyer. Love seeing all these stories. Back in Germany, we bought a house that was over 100 years old. It had to be stripped to the bare bones. Sadly we didn’t find anything. Would have been interesting.

We restored an 1894 house, having to rip all the 60's paneling down to the studs. When we drywalled, we put a time capsule with pictures of the house originally, what it looked like when we bought it, who all the owners were and when we restored it. It was a fun project deciding what to put in it and wondering if/when someone would find it. We would have been thrilled to find something in the walls. My husband replicated the original wood paneling for the foyer & wrote on the back of it "I can't believe you ripped my paneling out, you philistine!"

I purchased a house that has, "Candy & Kevin" written in the cement front and rear. But, no...I don't do that.

I put the calendar from the year we remodeled the kitchen behind a base cabinet. In the hall bathroom, I wrote a love note to my husband, for my kids to find if they ever remodel. He took a picture of it before we installed the tile--it won't be a total surprise, but it will be a sweet memory for them.

We let our children paint messages on the subfloor when we added the laundry room, and many years later, my grandson decorated the wall behind the built-in dish hutch in the dining room with 'artwork'. Our children's hand prints are in the concrete of the garage floor.

When I was working on the new guest room upstairs, I found two coins in the old wall, from the time the former owners' daughters were young. I added a coin from that year, and left them for a future remodeler.