Lady wanted me to clean a chimney that hadn't been used since 1987

Got a call from this old house in Portland. Owner swore she had a chimney. Found it bricked up with a wall built over it. She pointed at the living room wall and said "it's in there somewhere." Had to break out the plaster to even locate the flue. Mice had been living in it for decades. Took four hours to dig out the nests. Anyone else deal with people who forget their chimney was sealed off?

3 comments

3 Comments

pat_fisher2423d ago

Figure out who really owned that house before she did. Portland's got a lot of old flips and inherited properties where someone slapped a coat of paint on everything and called it good. You said the wall was built over the chimney, which means somebody went through the trouble of sealing it up proper. Could've been a previous owner who knew about a fire hazard or a bad draft and just hid it. Might explain why she had no clue it was there - she never paid attention to what was behind the drywall they put up in 2002.

the_diana23d ago

Honestly, the real wildcard here is that she probably hired you hoping you'd find some lost treasure or something in there. People get weird about sealed-off spaces, like they think it's a time capsule instead of just a rodent graveyard. Tbh, the mice were probably the only ones who had any use for that chimney in the last 40 years. Ngl, you probably saved her from a fire hazard she didn't even know she was sitting on top of.

seanjackson23d ago

Did something similar in my own attic a few years back. Old lady who owned the place swore there was a "secret room" behind the wall. Turned out it was just a tiny crawlspace full of dead birds and old newspapers from the 70s. No treasure, just a lot of dust and a few creepy mementos. But honestly clearing it out felt good, like we fixed a problem nobody knew they had. Sometimes the real find is just making the house safer.