Thar Be Treasures!

The previous owners had painstakingly run a single length of coax cable from one side of the upstairs master bedroom to the middle of the wall. And by painstakingly, I mean they pulled up the edge of the carpeting and slapped the cable down and pushed the carpet back over it, snaking it haphazardly along the perimeter of the room. And then called it a day. And thus, the house was labelled "Cable Ready."

Not so, insisted John. For the first few weekends in our lovely new house, John crawled under the house in a super stylish Tyvek elastic coverall suit, drilling holes in the floor and side of the house and battling ants and spiders for underworld domination. He ran multiple lines of coax, cat5 and string pulls to every room of the downstairs, installed back boxes/mounting boxes, faceplates, and jacks so every room was hard cabled for cable, internet, and telephone. After he got the downstairs of the house mostly-complete, he started on the upstairs.

In the corner of the master bedroom, he cut a small hole in the knee wall to run the pull lines. Somehow (and I still haven't figured out what really necessitated it), he wound up cutting out a larger hole (10" w x 12" h). Tucked into the cavity behind the knee wall was a modest collection of the owner/builder's junk mail. Evidently, he was a single man that was frequently invited to Jewish Mixers. Go fig.

In addition to the lovely 10-year-old bits of postal garbage was a lovely (term used loosely) lamp base. Taduh!

What a beaut! The wiring looked like it had been scavenged by a resourceful rodent, and the metallic finish on the base has largely flaked off, but I just can't bring myself to toss the artifact. Perhaps I'll spray paint it all white and rewire it.

It certainly makes me wonder what other lovely treasures are hiding in our walls (aside from, you know, the many colonies of ants that lurk in the rafters).