Some of my favorite stories in real estate come from the mouths of contractors and do-it-yourselfers. I hear all sorts of crazy things about what was found in a home during construction, and almost all of them stem from small fixes. Here are a few recent ones I’ve heard about that I thought would be fun to share.
During a recent home renovation to add a bathroom to the main floor, a homeowner told me they’d found chicken wire, dried up corn kernels, and a few feathers in the walls of their home. Given the location in Scotch Plains, there’s a good chance that maybe a few decades ago the area was used as farmland, but at this point the current owners had been living there for over 40 years.
I love stories about mysterious doorways, but in this case, someone simply found a door and nothing more. During a kitchen renovation to bump out a wall, the homeowners found a door in the wall, still on the hinges, that led to nowhere. No secret rooms or throughways. Just simply a door.
And finally, while moving around a few ceiling tiles in a basement, a homeowner noticed a link of chain just peering out over the edge. So they pulled it. And pulled some more. And kept pulling, until they had hit some resistance. After removing a few more tiles they discovered a billiard table light shoved up into the ceiling tiles, fully functional and still connected to live wires. Needless to say, this gave them a bit of a scare knowing live wires were jammed up into the tiles, and they promptly removed the entire fixture.