Whats in Your Time Capsule?
- Thread starter mikethompson
- Start date
Whatever I put in there will be more interesting than the half disintegrated cigarette package I found while demo'ing.
After gutting my first house I walled up a mason jar with a detailed map with coordinates to where I'd buried a stash of krugerrands. The map leads to the center of the parking lot of a Dollar General Store in a small town in northwest Pennsylvania.
And for the future man of the house, a nice folding knife, nothing too fancy, but well-made, and maybe fifty or seventy years old by the time it is rediscovered.
Is this another cob torture test?
My Time Capsule
A number of years ago I restored the fireplace in our living room. It entailed chipping the pointing back to the mortar and sandblasting all the stone. I tented in the fireplace and over the course of almost a year, chipped and blasted away decades of grime, soot and a hideous raised, white pointing. That hole in the back right corner is the old ash dump. It goes all the way down to the basement, but there isn't any way to clean it out. It's basically an 6'x6'x8' open stone foundation that the original early 1950's builder figured would never get enough ash dumped down in it to worry about. Since i was closing it up and putting in a woodstove, I shoveled all of the sandblast grit down the hole, then threw in the time capsule.
I happen to have a Mylar bag vacuum sealer, so I made up a package of these pictures, pictures of our family, my business card from the Philadelphia Inquirer, a copy of the paper with a front page picture that I had made that week, a copy of our utility bills, copies of the deeds to the property going back to the late 1700's, the business card of the mason that did the new pointing and a personal note to the future finder.
Who knows if it will ever be found? My guess is that this 5 acre property in the woods will some day be worth a lot more than the old house that sits on it. This house will be demolished and a McMansion will rise in its place. But, if it were me finding the time capsule, 20, 30 or 40 years from now, I'd greatly appreciate that someone thought enough of me to preserve a little slice of who and what had come before.
A number of years ago I restored the fireplace in our living room. It entailed chipping the pointing back to the mortar and sandblasting all the stone. I tented in the fireplace and over the course of almost a year, chipped and blasted away decades of grime, soot and a hideous raised, white pointing. That hole in the back right corner is the old ash dump. It goes all the way down to the basement, but there isn't any way to clean it out. It's basically an 6'x6'x8' open stone foundation that the original early 1950's builder figured would never get enough ash dumped down in it to worry about. Since i was closing it up and putting in a woodstove, I shoveled all of the sandblast grit down the hole, then threw in the time capsule.
I happen to have a Mylar bag vacuum sealer, so I made up a package of these pictures, pictures of our family, my business card from the Philadelphia Inquirer, a copy of the paper with a front page picture that I had made that week, a copy of our utility bills, copies of the deeds to the property going back to the late 1700's, the business card of the mason that did the new pointing and a personal note to the future finder.
Who knows if it will ever be found? My guess is that this 5 acre property in the woods will some day be worth a lot more than the old house that sits on it. This house will be demolished and a McMansion will rise in its place. But, if it were me finding the time capsule, 20, 30 or 40 years from now, I'd greatly appreciate that someone thought enough of me to preserve a little slice of who and what had come before.
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BTW. blue painter's tape doesn't stick to polyethylene sheeting. Gorilla tape does.
My fraternity house had an ash shoot in the fire place. The house was cut in half and physically moved (from Haggadorn to MAC in East Lansing), creating a 4 inch "step" throughout the middle of the house.
As a result of the "step", the ash shoot didn't line up with the access "door" in the basement. If the house ever gets demolished, there will be a massive amount of beer cans and bottle caps that were trapped in the shoot.
Nice work, by the way, and a great time capsule as well.
The Amish have fraternities? Interesting... The ones here in TN don't or they would be much larger communities, I think.
I'm reformed, not Orthodox.
Outstanding job! I love it!
So you just put the mylar bag of goodies down in the hole with sand and debris?
You might want to do some small engraving on the new stone directly above the hole, in order to at least give future owners the opportunity to notice that there is something underneath that is worth looking for... before they have it demolished.