Before I leave this house there will be a book for the next owners with all the changes we've done and as much of the history on the house as I can trace.
There also will be at least one new hidden compartment for them to find in the house.

When someone rips out the kitchen cabinets in my previous home they'll find a little drawing.

When we sold our last house, we gave the new owners a binder telling of all the restoration we'd done. If we hired the work out, we gave the name and number of who did the work. We included details of the manufacturer, model and color of things we purchased. We included before and after pictures.

In this house, when we redid the kitchen, we found the name and dates of the family members who put in the 1980-81 kitchen, we also found a teenager's attempt at porno drawings on the plaster walls, under sheetrock. We won't be doing the same as they did and instead are building another binder. We will, though, put a note inside and behind the vintage bathroom medicine chest we'll be putting back in...when the bathroom remodel gets to #1 on our to-do list.

we have left before pictures with a note explaining who did the work and when in each room we have done stapled to the studs before sheetrocking.

it was cool when we were tearing out the walls in our dining room someone stuffed a whole newspaper from 1934 in the wall, and someone left a detailed carving in the garage about who built it in 1929. the father and his 3 sons built it together in the summer of 1929, marching into the woods and cutting down trees and having the lumber milled. total cost to built in 1929: $425 for a 2 car garage with loft!

it is really nice knowing the history of the house you are living in/working on... but after reading this thread i wish we had done more with binders and stuff.

The teens who lived in our house left pairs of initials in hearts in the concrete of the swing poles. The also wrote names on the wall leading to the cellar. I often wonder are Sam & Shar (true love) still together. Does Leanne still love D.L.?

Most of the walls of our house have never been painted. The wallpaper was stripped each time they were repapered. The paperers added their names, so we did too. At least once, it seems that the neighbours were in on the papering party.

We have a file that we will leave for the next owners. It has details about things such as the location of the septic tank and field and outdoor plumbing and electrical lines, instruction manuals for appliances, good repair people, what we know of the history of the house, as well as the only communication we received from the PO's; "Don't let the water line at the barn freeze, or it will freeze solid back into the ground and you will have to haul water from the house for the rest of the winter."

After a pipe freezing behind the tub and removing the wall to repair it, I left my name and city on the wall and a little note as to what was had done. I just hope it is not me that gets to read that note!!

I have carved my initials in every home I've lived in, in an out-of-the-way place,like behind the bathroom door. My FIL wrote love notes to MIL on a wall in the basement. They were quite sweet. We didn't paint over them when we sold their house after they died. I wonder what the new owners thought of the writings.

I take a 3' section of 4" PVC pipe and glue a cap on one end, then glue a female thread adapter on the opposite end with a screw in plug. I then secure that to the wall in a utility room and put a final copy of all the building prints in that container with complete notes of all field changes. In this manner anyone, including myself, who has to make a repair to the structure has access to first hand information on the design and layout of all systems in the house.

We had new floor-to-ceiling bookshelves built in one room, and put a picture of us, picture of the house and a little note above the top shelf before the molding went on. I wrote a note with our names on the back of the wood panel that went in behind the shelves, against the wall.

We will be redoing the kitchen soon, and that's going to be very well-documented. We'll leave notes behind the new cabinets.

When DH had to replace some drywall in the dining room, we had DS make a time capsule. He wrote his name, age and year on a piece of paper and included a couple of small toys. DH put it in a ziploc bag and stapled it to a stud. Our home was built in 1929 and we are only the 3rd family to occupy it.
Sheree

We have a 1700 farmhouse.I have quite a bit of info about the house.I made copies of all deeds and wrote all I knew.We put money 1.00,quarter,etc.1 of each currency ,we put in all we did,what we found.I have a deed a col.George Himes from battle of Gettysburg,that fought.I also have his photo.I copied those and put in there.I also put photos of the new 4 bay garage,new barn etc (hubby built) and dates etc.In a can inside the wall.

I found some of those old solid-top soda cans and some women's underwear in a wall once. It wasn't very informative, but did help me date the remodel.

In one wall of my current house I left some Y2K preparation manuals printed by our State Govt--- remember all that nuttiness about stocking up on food and filling your bathtub with water in case society as we knew it collapsed and we couldn't get water?

In another house I left a bunch of photos and minutes of our housing cooperative meetings- should make some interesting reading for someone.

I bought a huge old house, originally a farm/home, 1920's or there abouts, that had at one time been an alcohol rehab joint. Under the house, crawlspace, were tons of old booze bottles. I left them for whomever to figure it out.

Today I took up some linolium from my 1920s bumgalow and under it were newspapers from 1952. Some of them I am going to frame, matted with the linolium in a frame made of the original 20s hardwood from another room. Some of them I am goign to return under the new floor along with some current papers.

All of you who are saving stuff for the future inhabitants should pat yourselves on the back! What a wonderful idea.

My friends owns an 1874 house (which, by Oregon standards, is quite old), and when the bought the house, the found a "house book" in the attic. It turned out that people had been saving info about the house since the very beginning. The amazing thing was that because of this house book, my friend discovered that she was distantly related to the man who had first lived in the house--she'd had no idea when she purchased the house. Pretty cool, huh?

When we bought our home, the PO gave us the original deed papers. It was fantastic, she was only the 2nd owner of the home and it was built in 1929, but the land passed thru many owners before the house was built and we have a record of each transaction. Her only stipulation was that when we sell the house we have to pass it on to the next owners. Boo-hoo, I'd love to keep it.......
Sheree

We just put some pictures of the old bathroom and a note behind our medicine cabinet, talking about the changes and why we made them. I had all the contractors sign their name and trade; the carpenter drew a picture of a hammer. I got smart this time and put everything to do with the bathroom renovation in a binder with a contact sheet. I hope it will be fun for someone to go through it later down the road.

In the kitchen behind the window seat, we put a picture of the old kitchen and a little about some of the things we had done to our place (trees we planted, pond we built, etc.) I had everyone sign the wall behind the beadboard, which we also signed. I'm assuming we'll be long gone by then, since I'll have to be carried out in a box, and who tears out a window seat?

Now that I think about it, I should really include some pictures of the landscaping somewhere, in case some of those trees have a chance to get really big! Maybe I'll find a good place to hide them in the attic.

We still have the original blueprints from 1948, and we'll add our blueprints of the kitchen addition. It's fun to think about someone finding them one day.

RE: What kind of stuff/notes have you left for future inhabitants?

A mother in law and an outline of a body with a few shotgun shells.

Jay

oh.... :-)

Well, so far I haven't left anything for the future owners of my place, but I have left notes for some to discover in homes I've helped to improve.

When I tore out my walls I did find an antique cigar box set in the ground plaster that was shoved into the wood lathe. The builder, a carpenter or someone placed that box inside the wall in 1915.

Guess I'll leave something in these walls before I close it all up.

Behind the kitchen cabinets of the remodel are a couple of photos of before, the dates of the remodel, our names, and copies of receipts for cabinets. I also left photos of my cat who escaped the gaping holes in the wall of the remodel and was hit by a car with her story.

I found quite a few toys (marbles, 1940's era tractor and "jet", paper dolls, etc) and an old metal Trojan condoms tin in the walls--I think they had fallen from the attic above. I made them into a 3D collage and may leave that for the new owners some day when I leave, but we'll see.

I'm a contractor. In the old days it was frequently found that the workmen would sign the plaster in the attic, or on lower floor before the paper was applied. Many folks sign concrete pours; their own Grauman's Chinese, so to speak. On special jobs, we'll often leave a soda bottle stuffed with a listing of the owner, the contractors and crewmen, and the dates of the work, and sometimes a current coin or two. We always use pencil, not ink, because ink can fade and vanish. Carbon remains.

We frequently place these notes buried in our masonry. On two jobs, I have placed this bottle behind a date stone in the stone gable.

Another neat trick is to leave a "Kilroy was here" on plaster or stucco. Several walk-in fireplaces, in some fine olde colonial homes in our area, have a Kilroy on the plaster on the back side of the breastwork beam (placed there to keep the oak beam from charring). So we dressed it up a bit... with names and dates.