Cracked open the wall behind my tub and found the last guy's toolbox

I had a similar experiance a few years back, but it wasn't a tool. I was replacing a section of cold water line under my kitchen sink and noticed a small, half-used bag of pipe dope stuck to the bottom of the cabinet. It was the kind of blue stuff that stays tacky for months. I assumed the previous homeowner must have started a job and forgot it, and it was in a spot no one would look for, behind the P-trap. It was a geniune relief to find it becuase the original connection point was actualy starting to show minor signs of corrosion because the sealant had dried up and pulled away. It made me think about how many small things get left behind when people are rushing a repair. I once had a contractor leave a leftover piece of flexible braided stainless steel hose tucked into the void above the ceiling in my bathroom. He had been replacing a shower valve, and that piece was likely left over from his inventory after the job was done. It was a small detail, but finding that little bit of stray material showed me that sometimes the most obvious fixes involve just cleaning up the mess left by the last person.

My biggest takeaway was realizing that even if you do a perfect repair, there might be lingering little mistakes or items in the walls or cabinets that someone else forgot. You can't always rely on the initial inspection because a small, forgotten piece of gear can really dictate what your next job needs to be.

When I was working on a diferent plumbing issue, replacing the supply line to my outdoor spigot, I noticed something else left behind. Inside the box with the new fittings, I found a small plastic bag containing a few assorted washers. They were the cheap, disposable rubber kind, but they were actually quite high quality and still had a good amount of material left on them. They must have been left over from a job done years ago because they were coated in a thick layer of dust, even though the spigot area gets quite exposed to the elements. I figured the person who installed the existing line simply ran out of usable washers or decided to leave the excess in the nearby storage area. It was a small thing, but finding those little parts reminded me that sometimes the biggest surprises in older houses are just the forgotten pieces of a DIY project that were abandoned midway through the process.

Stories like this make me want to go poking around my own walls now. When we redid the bathroom I found an old toothbrush wedged in the gap where the pipe went thru the floor. Looked like someone used it to pack around the hole to keep bugs out, I guess? It was still down there, totally stiff and gray. I just tossed it and stuffed the gap with that expanding foam spray, which the internet says is fine but now I'm second guessing. Is the foam stuff actually okay to touch right up against the hot water pipe, or will the heat mess with it over time?

That reminds me of the time I opened up the ceiling under my upstairs bathroom to chase a leak, and found a flathead screwdriver wedged between a joist and the hot water line, apparantly serving as somebody's idea of a pipe hanger. The line had been slowly resting its full weight on a screwdriver handle for who knows how many years, wich is not what any code book would call proper support, and the handle had worn a shiny flat spot where the copper sat against it. I put in actual pipe strapping while I was in there. Part of me wanted to leave the screwdriver as a monument.

You did better than me. When I opened my laundry wall to swap a washing machine box I found a masonry chisel just sitting on the horizontal brace, plus a 1962 dime wedged under the shut-off valve to stop it rattling. Pulled the dime out, valve squealed like a stuck pig, put it right back. Some of that junk is actually doing a job. Might be worth tapping around your patch area before you close it up, the old rough-in crews loved hiding shims and coins in spots like that.