I was helping my partner remodel a house.

The owners hired us to remove all the old wallpaper and see what was beneath before we started redoing the walls.

I never thought we would find something interesting, other than ant and bug infested wallboard. The house was over 200 years old, and it hadn’t been lived in for decades. The owners of the home wanted to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, which meant it needed a lot of updates. The first thing we did was start removing the wallpaper from the walls. After days of scraping, spraying, and scraping more, we finally got to where we thought we were on the last layer. That’s when I hit something hard, and was surprised. It didn’t feel like wallboard or any kind of wood. It felt like I was hitting a stone. I called my partner over and told him what was happening. He started peeling the last ten layers of paper away, and that’s when we discovered an old fireplace. There were so many layers of wallpaper on the wall, that the fireplace had been completely hidden away. Someone had put a board in front of the hearth to make it possible to hide the hearth, but it was there. When the owners showed up that afternoon, he was taken aback. He was thrilled to see the fireplace, but he never expected there to be such a find behind all the wallpaper. He was now anxious to see what other treasures were hidden inside the house. He was hoping we might find another fireplace.

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