Here are a few more items that we found behind our mantel in our 1917 house when we removed the mantel to refinish it and repair the wall.
These rulers are probably 70 to 80 years old. This is my guess from the age of the women that lived in our house all their lives until we bought it. They were about elementary age in the 20s and high school in the 30s. We also found some of their homework behind the mantel. I love the color of the aged wood. The wood is embossed with the metric marks and numbers on the middle ruler which is pretty neat and gives it an old-fashioned, quality look when you see it with a raking light. Doesn’t it bring back memories of your old school days long ago? At least two of these rulers were made by well-known pencil companies with long, interesting histories.

Wide baseboards, as much as I like them, just make for more work. I’m still working on them. Mine are 7-inch wide white oak. I have some baseboards that are all one piece that run the whole length of the room. At the time I started them, I had good knees. But after a year of working on the stairs, floor, stripping the floors by hand, my knees turned to putty and I needed to take the baseboards off of the wall and put them up on a work table. Read the rest of this entry »