Hidden treasures published between 1930 to 1950 which you enjoyed ?
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoRelated Discussions
Treasure in the attic, basement...other places?
Comments (16)We've got a 1920s Chicago bungalow. We've found lots of odd stuff. Maybe not treasure, but... We found an old 1950s metal horse . He's a stallion - which I find humorous as I think he was a child's toy. He's wearing a western saddle and bridle. About a foot high and long. Weighs quite a bit. Also up in the attic is an old 48 star flag. The previous owner was a WWII vet. The flag has seen better days. We're not sure what to do with it. Great for us but not very "exciting" is the quarter round trim we found up there. The front three rooms (family room, dining room, bedroom) had all been carpeted. We spent weeks pulling up old carpet and padding and then had the floors refinished to the original golden oak color. The POs had taken the time to pull up the quarter round at the bottom of the trim. Rather than throw it away they stuck it in the attic. They even bundled it by room, all neatly labeled. Gotta love POs like that! Nothing was cleaned out of the garage. Tons of old heavy gardening tools, shovels and rakes generally. The rafters of the garage are filled with scrap wood. We've been pulling it down bit by bit. Some of it is old 2x4s. The true 2" x 4" kind. We're hanging on to those as we hope to do some remodeling at some point and they might come in handy. Found an old (1950s?) kids sled up there. We also had a mystery box. Finally pulled it down earlier this spring. Ended up, it was filled with potato sacks. ?? I've kept them as some have really cool graphics on them. I'm guessing their 1940s or 50s. I need to find a way to clean them up a bit though. Also found a cool piece of a glass window with the word LUNCH engraved in it. It's quite big and heavy, must have come from a restaurant (maybe that explains the potato sacks?) It's broken on either end. I'd like to take a stained glass class to see if I can fix it up. It would look really cool hanging in the kitchen....See MoreAnd what did you find in your old house?
Comments (91)While ripping out a lathe & plaster wall in a bathroom rehab I found what initially looked like a very old piece of 1' copper pipe with a cap on the end but something was wrong here. It had a small hole about 1/8" diameter drilled through the center of the cap. It was completely covered with a black sooty dust so it was difficult to see what it was intended for. When I touched it i realized it was not attached to anything, just standing there leaning on the stud in the wall so I lifted it out and to my surprise I had an old lever action saddle rifle type BB gun. Out of curiosity I took a rag and wipe it off. It had a bit of very light surface rust but all in all it appeared to be in very good shape. Having grwon up on a farm in the late 50's & 60's I had my share of BB guns but this one was unusual. All the BB guns I ever saw had a small hole on the underside of the barrel where you poured BB's into the barrel but this one had no hole. How do you load it I wondered? I cocked the action and pointing it at some scrap wood i pulled the trigger, wham, it shot fine, or at least it shot a blast of air, but there were no BB's. Later that night while sitting at home I cleaned it up and was able to read the manufacturers name as "Daisy MFG, Model 16, Plymouth, Michigan." I then did an online search for Daisy Mfg and sent them an email to inquire about the history of this BB gun. They informed me that this was a single shot BB gun originally marketed as "A Daisy for a Buck", thats right folks, the original selling price back in the late 1920's or 30's was $1. They also stated that this was the only saddle rifle type BB gun they ever produced as a single shot....See MoreWhat did you find in your old house?
Comments (55)Well, this has gone on a while, but I just got here so I'll post. First off, I grew up in a very large Empire period stone house in the midwest. As kids we found a few things, but the most interesting feature of that house is that it was supposedly a part of the underground railroad (the house is next to the mississippi on the Illinois side). In the full basement is a passage that has been bricked up. No one knows what is behind there and now that I'm a contractor I often think of going back there before my parents sell the house to see what is behind. I've found in my work: - An old town welfare receipt from the thirties in the upstairs of an old rural cape. - Old bottles and a can of 'new colored' blue paint, opened by a can opener, probably from the early century. - a baseball card (not rare) from the fifties under a tub we removed. - a 60's era soft porn slide under a built cabinet - various old coins I now live in an 1890 gothic owned by three generations of the same family. In it my kids have found: two old umbrellas, one with a sterling handle, a local stable advertising calendar from 1896, tons of old newspapers dating from the 1890's, a toy gun from the fifties, a victorian era small Swedish bible tucked in the floor boards upstairs, a geography book printed in 1820 (talks of the south as a place of slave plantations). The receipt for siding the house in the thirties, a forties ear coca-cola cooler, Probably the coolest find was when my son was fourteen years old on his birthday, which lands on Memorial Day, found a noisemaker, an old flag and a newspaper tucked in the wall studs in the loft of the adjoining barn. The newspaper was dated exactly one hundred years to the day he found them --- with talk of the Memorial Day parade, etc, which we assume the noisemaker and the flag came from. He brought them to me and didn't even notice that detail until I looked at the date. I was pretty blown away. A friend at the time who liked to think she had 'special' clairvoyance, said that it was a 'sign' that the spirits in the house liked us....See MoreStarting Over 1930s - 1980s kitchen
Comments (23)I'll be contrary and say I'm against keeping that cabinet. The "old" cabinet is a hybrid from the (I'd say 50's-60's) previous renovation and the original cabinet. The bottom is original and the top has clutzy replacement doors instead of the (probably) of inset doors, the new doors were probably an attempt to blend the new cabinets with the old. The kitchen probably had one of those long wall sinks with integral drainboards in that area and the photos show the newly improved arrangement with only one small full depth base cabinet - the sink base. If you keep it, I think you can't place the dishwasher where you've drawn it - I don't think you have even 18" for a dw between where a farm sink cabinet would be and the edge of the antique base cabinet. You already know that its height from the countertop prevents you from using that counter space for anything but storage. If you keep it, you might look for new doors for it and a better companion cabinet for the other side of the sink window. The wall cabinet there looks like a replacement ir later addition anyway. Doing the return (making the little "L" on the dining room side) doesn't actually get you much - you lose more of the easy storage in the corner, the upper becomes more difficult to use and you don't really gain USEFUL counterspace because you can't use the counter in the corner. A lot of this will have different charateristics than it does now because you're much further away from that upper when you use standard size cabinets. The "L" prevents changing the dw to the left side of the sink - again I think that's necessary if you want to save the antique cabinet. In what I drew, You can have the ref where drawn free standing or with a small pantry that opens towards the bathroom. If you choose to do a range in that location, the suggestion above for an antique range is a good one - craig's list sometimes has chambers and others listed for baltimore that work and are reasonable. The issue with an unrestored antique range is SAFTEY. They sometimes have problems with gas leaks, rust or ovens that don't work right. You could also maybe do the 40" Frigidaire for something that feels more like an older style. Lots more cash than that gets you a restored antique range. Some more cash gets you something really stylish like this bert. At about that level of pricing, you can just reach a pro style range like an american or blue star. In any event, What you can't do is keep that partly old cabinet and "recounter" it deeper, put a counter in front of the window and expect to be able to reach inside it on either the uppers or the lowers (without crawling). By increasing the depth of the counter, you're increasing your distance from the upper and you won't be able to reach as well as you could before. You also won't be able to use either of the drawers because of the extended depth of the counter. I had to laugh about the wall fan (I have one). Isn't your kitchen greasy? Don't you spend time cleaning the grease off those pipes and the exhaust fan itself? Don't you find kinda gory dust on the ceiling fan - dust that clumps up because of the grease? Little flecks of greasy stuff on the walls and cabinets that are nearly impossible to clean off? Here is a link that might be useful: Frigidaire range...See More- 6 years ago
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