When renovating.. be careful

[-MIKE-]

Um.... yeah, ok.

"Officer, they drive on the left side of the road in England and since our laws are derived from English Common Law... hey, do we really need handcuffs here?"

[-MIKE-]

They always seem to come up with a settlement about the time you're out of money. :-)

[-MIKE-]

Yes, those paragraphs and my reply require a cup of coffee and some face time. :-)

[Richard Evans]

In one case, the $30 was returned to its rightful owner. The rightful owner of the $182k was long dead. The contractor's duty was to give it to the homeowner. If I were the homeowner, I'd feel no obligation to track down the heirs of the original owner. Or track them down, give them the money, then charge them $182k storage fee.

[-MIKE-]

I've been talking about the contractor this whole time, but homeowner's part in this is an interesting discussion.

Just thinking out loud... I would say that anything that is inside the internal structure of a house is part of the house. You buy the house, you are buying what's in the walls. It's the previous owner's responsibility to know what's in there. It's not like a safe inside a wall, behind a picture that some old lady with Alzheimer's forgot about. But then again, it's not an integral part of the structure.

Imagine if copper were to go up in price to match the value of gold in a hundred years and power is all wireless, you could see some interesting homeowner/contractor confrontations, when 50-75 year old walls are torn down to reveals thousands of dollars worth of Romex. :-)

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

Hmm, seems if I found something like that in that case, I'd be inclined to leave it "lost". Just plaster it back up and let subsequent generations, perhaps a bit more enlightened find it.