Stone Carriage House: Part 8, Time Capsule

I’m too excited to bury the lead. We hid a time capsule in our stone Carriage House!

*In my best Oprah voice, “You get a time capsule, and YOU get a time capsule, but only if you find it!*

It is not a secret that I am unabashedly on the hunt for buried treasure on our 250-year-old property. Surely, surely, there must be some cash, gold coins, or Prohibition-era liquor hidden somewhere, right?

Unless someone already found it.

Hmmm…nope! I refuse to believe it. Hope springs eternal around here.

Plus, my treasure hunt is just good, silly fun. Renovating and restoring a property as old as ours is no easy endeavor, so we need a little lightheartedness to get us through the grueling tasks. And snacks. There’s always snacks.

If I enjoy searching for treasure so much, it stands to reason that some other homeowner would also enjoy the same thing.

That’s why we hid a time capsule in the Carriage House while we were working on restoring this building and expanding our home gym.

This time capsule is not filled with anything of monetary value.

I repeat. The time capsule is NOT filled with anything of monetary value, so don’t come stalking me. We need all the spare change we can find to pay for restoring the Carriage House. I’m not going to put it in the time capsule.

Instead, it’s filled with something even better!

What could be better than cold, hard cash?

Pictures.

Pictures?

Yes, pictures.

Some of you are skeptical, I know. That’s okay. Helps keep things spicy around here.

I have half a dozen old photos of our house. By old, I mean a few decades old. They were given to me by the previous homeowner.

To say I cherish those photos is an understatement. They are kept safe with the pile of documents to grab in case we need to evacuate the house quickly. If they’re right there, I might as well grab them and my passport, right? Nothing wrong with my priorities.

I wish I had photos of our house that were older than me, but so far, the feelers I have put out have not yielded any photographic gold.

Fun fact! Our house is older than the camera. The first camera that could create a permanent image was invented in 1816. Our house was built in the 1780s.

My point is photos of old houses are rare, so it’s hard to know exactly how they’ve evolved over time if we don’t have photographic evidence, drawings, documents with detailed descriptions, etc.

If I was to find a time capsule in our house full of old pictures and notes from a previous homeowner, I’d probably keel over from excitement. When Handy Husband revived me, I’d never stop talking about that time capsule. I wouldn’t even be disappointed that they didn’t leave me any booze to drink while I poured over the photos they left me.

I also included some newspaper scraps that I found stuffed into the stone wall.

I’ll never know why the newspaper was wadded up and placed in the wall, but now I can make it someone else’s puzzle to figure out. My generosity knows no bounds.

Do I know how long the time capsule will protect its contents? No, I do not. I don’t even really care that much. I did my best to protect the contents following guidelines from the Library of Congress. After that, it is in fate’s hands. Vaya con Dios, dear time capsule.

There’s also a deep seated satisfaction in knowing that we did something for someone else, and there’s nothing in it for us other than the ability to pay the fun forward. We don’t know who that person is. We don’t know when they will find the time capsule. We don’t know why they will run across it. We’ll likely never know if they found it. But it tickles me to no end to have this delicious little secret that I can take to my grave.

Let’s just hope whoever buys this home next doesn’t read my blog. That would really spoil the plot.

Would you be excited to find a time capsule in your house? Or treasure? Let me know. You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook. I respond to all of your comments and sometimes even in a timely manner!

Happy treasure hunting!

P.S. If you’re keeping track, this is the second time capsule we’ve installed on this property. It’s probably the last, but I we haven’t done any work on our cute, little barn yet, so time will tell. Read more about the first time capsule here.

P.P.S. The time capsule we used is steel and supposedly water tight. It was under $25.  It comes in different sizes, so make sure you buy one that will fit the contents you need. Find it here.

Thanks for following along with this project. We appreciate the support and encouragement more than you’ll ever know. If you missed any of the past posts in this series, here they are:

Stone Carriage House Gym Expansion Part 1

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 2, Demo

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 3, Old Windows

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 4, Pipes In Stone Walls

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 5, Adding a Window In a Stone Wall

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 6, How to Remove a Stone Wall

Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 7, The Floor Problem

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