Ever Found or Left a Note in the Wall the Way This Couple Did?
The remodeling couple whose note from previous homeowners went viral tell us about their fun find. What’s yours?
With their first child on the way, Jess and Alex Monney of San Jose, California, were eager to make headway in their master bathroom remodel when their contractor sent them a photo July 3 of something he’d found in the wall. The previous homeowners had tucked their photo, an introduction and a teasing note, complete with a photo of their pet rabbit, in the space behind where the bathroom mirror had hung. “We remodeled this bathroom summer 1995,” the previous owners had written in a friendly word bubble. “If you’re reading this, that means you’re remodeling the bathroom again. What’s wrong with the way we did it?!?!?” The Monneys loved the message and quickly shared the photo of it on Twitter. Within two days, it had been “liked” and retweeted thousands of times and was getting international news coverage.
“We got the warm fuzzies from it and then jumped straight to ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do something too!’” Jess Monney told Houzz.
“We got the warm fuzzies from it and then jumped straight to ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do something too!’” Jess Monney told Houzz.
The Monneys’ tweet was up to more than 100,000 “likes” before they ended up taking it down for the previous homeowners’ privacy, but the story got us thinking about the ways homeowners connect with the people who have lived in their house before or will live in their house in the years to come. We’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about unearthed rare comic books, beer cans and baseball cards from old homeowners, but there must be plenty of messages from homeowner to homeowner too.
User Angie Schuster, for instance, wrote to her home’s future potential owners during a kitchen remodel, describing on the wall behind the pantry cabinet how much she and her family loved the house and why they were remodeling. She even marked her children’s height at the time.
“We felt like someday if we remodeled again and were still in the house, we’d love to see how much they’d grown,” Schuster wrote in response to a previous story about hidden home treasures. “If not, someone else has a simple story of the previous homeowners!”
Houzzer kpelk found the scrawled note seen here when workers pried off an old marble baking slab during a kitchen renovation.
Share: We want to hear your stories about messages you’ve found or left specifically from or for a home’s residents. Do you have a story like the Monneys’? Tell us about it in the Comments.
User Angie Schuster, for instance, wrote to her home’s future potential owners during a kitchen remodel, describing on the wall behind the pantry cabinet how much she and her family loved the house and why they were remodeling. She even marked her children’s height at the time.
“We felt like someday if we remodeled again and were still in the house, we’d love to see how much they’d grown,” Schuster wrote in response to a previous story about hidden home treasures. “If not, someone else has a simple story of the previous homeowners!”
Houzzer kpelk found the scrawled note seen here when workers pried off an old marble baking slab during a kitchen renovation.
Share: We want to hear your stories about messages you’ve found or left specifically from or for a home’s residents. Do you have a story like the Monneys’? Tell us about it in the Comments.
User Dianne and her family wanted to leave a similar surprise impression — she and her family outlined their bodies in the colored chalk shown here as they were building their second home, and then they sealed in the drawings with clear acrylic and wood flooring. “The subcontractors thought this was hilarious, but somewhere down the line, someone will uncover this ‘art,’ Dianne wrote.
In the wall behind the picture frames shown here, my own family plastered over a Folgers coffee can time capsule stuffed with a letter from my family to our home’s future owners; photos of ourselves, the house and the addition that was then underway; and an issue of the newspaper reporting on the first night game at Wrigley Field — big news for my family of Chicago Cubs fans — in 1988.
Our coffee can capsule even made the local paper, shown here. That’s me, age 22 months, and my older brothers and cousin peeking out between the exposed beams where our secret treasure would go.
Our homes are a powerful link between the lives we’re now living, the lives that played out within our walls in the past, and the lives that will unfold there in the future. These kinds of messages and stories, Monney says, appeal to everybody.
“People are interested in history and finding things and discovering things like this, and in a world that’s just full of negative news and negative things happening all of the time, it’s kind of a nice, warm, feel-good story,” she says. “And [it] makes you wonder about your own home.”
Tell us: Have you ever left a note or a time capsule for your home’s future owners? Have you found a note from the people who lived in your house before you? Share your stories and photos in the Comments.
More: You Won’t Believe What These Homeowners Found in Their Walls
Our homes are a powerful link between the lives we’re now living, the lives that played out within our walls in the past, and the lives that will unfold there in the future. These kinds of messages and stories, Monney says, appeal to everybody.
“People are interested in history and finding things and discovering things like this, and in a world that’s just full of negative news and negative things happening all of the time, it’s kind of a nice, warm, feel-good story,” she says. “And [it] makes you wonder about your own home.”
Tell us: Have you ever left a note or a time capsule for your home’s future owners? Have you found a note from the people who lived in your house before you? Share your stories and photos in the Comments.
More: You Won’t Believe What These Homeowners Found in Their Walls
“We haven’t decided on the note, or what exactly we’re going to do yet, but we’ve definitely tossed around a lot of fun, cheeky ideas,” Monney says.