I frequently joke that I’ve been searching for hidden treasure since we bought our circa 1780s home five years ago.
I only joke to downplay the fact that I am a grown adult who thinks this could actually happen to me. Crazier things have happened in New Jersey.
I grew up reading books where the plot lines contained treasure maps and old buildings with secret rooms and hidden passageways. My imagination runs wild but it’s not implausible to think there are gold coins or Prohibition-era liquor buried around here somewhere.
Unfortunately, I haven’t found anything newsworthy yet but it turns out a treasure of sorts was hiding underneath a bunch of dirt that I just got around to cleaning after five years.
Oops.
The dirt in question was in one room of our stone Carriage House that we’ve been restoring to function as a gym. This building sits right next to our home and is approximately the same age as our home. I’ll do the math for you. It’s close to 250 years old, give or take a few years.
In fairness, some dirt was added to the floor by yours truly as the restoration process included repointing lime mortar on old stone walls.
This is a horrifically dirty task.
You know the dirt coverage is bad when you don’t immediately reach for a broom or mop to clean a floor, but go for a scraping tool instead. *sigh*
Below you can see a section that we scraped and vacuumed. It was looking better but wasn’t anything to write a blog post to get excited about.
I was just going to leave the floor like that.
Let’s keep it real. Horses had been stabled in here at one point. Horses. That need a place to…well, you get the point.
Is there any coming back from that?
But I did have a niggle of curiosity.
I told myself I’d just do one quick experiment to see if there was any hope for this floor.
Cue the crescendo of dramatic music, please.
When the floor received the life-affirming elixir of H20 via a stiff bristle brush, things were about to feel transformational.
Are those actual terracotta floor tiles?
I was actually shocked at this point. Shocked.
Who knew those tiles could look so gorgeous? Certainly not me.
Here you can see, from left to right, tiles that we scraped clean, tiles where nothing was done to them, and tiles that were scrubbed with water.
Here’s how the floor looks now that it is clean and dry.
We don’t know why half the room is concrete and half is terracotta floor tiles. I’m guessing it was all terracotta floor tiles at one point.
Perhaps my favorite part of the floor is that you can still see black burn or soot marks in the fireplace area. There might be a way to remove them, but it’s not by scrubbing them with water and a brush.
I’m not inclined to even try because I feel like those marks honor part of this building’s history when someone used this fireplace for warmth or cooking, maybe both. That bit of character isn’t hurting anything.
Here’s the floor in context with the fireplace.
It’s so pretty, right?
We did not pull any of the terracotta floor tiles up to see if there was a maker’s mark on the back. The tiles are set pretty well in the ground and we didn’t want to disturb them. If we ever decide we want more of these same terracotta floor tiles, then I might look for a maker’s mark.
But until then, we will let them be.
By the way, terracotta can also be spelled as terra cotta or terra-cotta. You’d think that surely there would be consensus on how to spell something that has been in existence for over 10,000 years, but no. That is not the world we live in.
We do live in a world where I can discover gorgeous terracotta floor tiles under piles of dirt and carry the hope that maybe one day I’ll find treasure that will pay off our mortgage. Isn’t that great?
What do you think of my “treasure” find? I’d love to know. It makes my day to hear from you. Please leave a comment on this blog post, email us here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.
Happy treasure-seeking, friends!
P.S. Next week I’ll share the finished photos of this restored space.
Thank you for being here today. I know you have so many choices of where to spend your precious time and I appreciate you spending a few minutes of it with me. If you’re not ready to go, here are some other blog posts you might enjoy.
Glazed Terra-Cotta Pot Makeover