Interesting Finds

When you're rooting around a hundred year old house, you're bound to find some interesting items.  Because our house hasn't seen any renovations since about 1972, we find some neat things.  Or rather, I find neat things, my husband doesn't always agree with how "neat" my finds really are.  For example, I came across this old Black Flag insect sprayer in a wood bin I asked to keep.  My husband said it was trash and he was throwing it away.  I said I was cleaning it up and displaying it in the laundry/mudroom.  Gives credence to the whole "one mans trash is another woman's treasure".
 

  Last night, the hubby and I despite saying we were tired and going straight to bed when we got home) ended up working on the doorways into the living room and kitchen.  Originally there were doors on each room off the hallway.  The doors are gone and we wanted the doorways to be slightly wider so we removed the 1x4 along the inside of each entryway. When my husband pulled off the first piece, I noticed the nails looked a little funky.  Upon closer inspection, I realized they were nails made by a blacksmith.  Pretty awesome.  Even the hubby was excited about this find.

                                             

Behind the wood we pulled off, we found ancient math.  You know, the math they did where 1,220 + 240= 1,460  and no little drawings were needed to figure it out.  There were no paragraphs needed to explain the little pictures used to answer the problem either.  It was just math. (In case you're wondering, I hate common core math).  Part of me hates the idea of covering this up, because in a few years, no one will remember what simple math looked like.

In all my cleaning and pulling down of ceilings, I've also found some newspapers from August 1960.  There is mention of JFK when he was a Senator and a half page ad from the electric company telling people how wonderful it is to have a house run entirely on electricity (it even has examples of local families and the amount they pay a month for electricity).  And late last night while working on smoothing the trim in the hallway, I discovered that there was once scrollwork on the steps similar to what I found along the top of the stairs.  I'm hoping I can find the pattern through the paint and be able to redo the scrollwork by painting, but it wasn't as easy to see on the steps downstairs as it was on the area by the upstairs hallway.
I'm sure there will be a ton of other things we come across.  I'm hoping for some money in the walls or something along those lines.