A woman has revealed she made a jaw-dropping discovery behind her parents’ wall after they were forced to cut it out due to a leak.
Elizabeth often boasts of her renovation skills on her TikTok channel, where she has over 3,000 followers.
Most recently, the US-based content creator and renovator took to the video-sharing platform to find things hidden in the walls of his parents’ 1940s home.
In one clip, Elizabeth shared footage of a pile of razor blades found in her family’s home.
Elizabeth revealed that she made a jaw-dropping discovery behind her parents’ wall when they were forced to cut it due to a leak.
The US-based content creator and renovator took to the video-sharing platform to show off things hidden in the walls of his parents’ 1940s home.
In one clip, Elizabeth shared footage of a pile of razor blades found in her family’s home
He captioned the clip: ‘Have you ever seen this? Oh, the thing you found in an old house!’
‘Okay, so we’re working on my parents’ house that was built in the 1940s, and there was a little leak in the bathroom, so we had to cut into the wall, and we couldn’t believe what we found in the wall. ,’ he said at the start of the clip.
Then, he showed a pile of razor blades. ‘Look at all these razor blades,’ she said.
Elizabeth added: ‘They’re all razor blades,’ as she turned the pile over.
‘Apparently, they did it during the day. When they had to change razor blades, they stuck them to the wall,’ he said.
At the end of the video, Elizabeth said she ‘didn’t understand’, but many viewers flooded her comments section to reveal that this was a common practice back in the day.
One man said: ‘We still have the original medicine cabinet in one of our bathrooms with a little slot for a razor blade. Our walls are probably full!’
‘Yes, the original medicine cabinet had a slot for a razor blade… my grandparents had one too,’ another user added.
At the end of the video, Elizabeth said she ‘didn’t understand’, but many viewers flooded her comments section to reveal that this was a common practice back in the day.
Someone else wrote: ‘Every vanity in a bathroom, had a little slot where you put the razor blades.’
‘Yes! It was in the hotel!’ One person commented.
In the past, many people discovered that razor blades were left behind walls, while others even shared stories of finding blades in their own homes.
‘My parents were renovating some stuff and razor blades started pouring from the wall adjacent to our bathroom and as I explained this incident, we got at least 30 people (this also happened in Texas for the record),’ wrote one.
‘We are in the Chicago area. We tore out our bathroom wall a few years ago and the old, rusty blades literally poured out of the wall behind the sink like Rotke’s skull,’ another user said.
‘I just removed an inset medicine cabinet from a bathroom in a c. 1860 house I’m restoring in Maine, and hundreds of razor blades were found behind it. I was so confused until I saw the small slot. Then I was just helpless!’ Added someone else.
These days, slots are no longer needed, as most people use fully disposable razors.
But that was not always the case. In the early 20th century, men who wanted to shave their faces went to a barber shop, where a professional shaved them with a straight-edge razor.
In 1903, Gillette came up with an alternative that men could use at home: a double-edged safety razor.
In the past, many people discovered razor blades thrown behind walls, while others even shared stories of finding blades in their own homes.
In 1903, Gillette came up with an alternative that men could use at home: a double-edged safety razor.
But these disposable blades introduced a problem, because they couldn’t be thrown in the trash. For one thing, the sharp blades were unsafe for people handling garbage — but they could also end up in people’s gardens, since garbage was often burned in the 30s and 40s, and the ash spread over gardens.
So, according to Reader’s Digest, these razor slots were invented as a way to safely get rid of blades. Because the blades were so small, the idea was that it would take a really, really long time for them to fill a wall cavity.
“The old medicine cabinets were placed directly inside the interior walls,” Richard D’Angelo, project manager for JWE Remodeling & Roofing, told Reader’s Digest.
‘These older units had a slot in the back which was used to discard used blades, allowing them to drop into the wall cavity between the framing studs and collect on top of the bottom-plate studs.
D’Angelo added, ‘When we remodeled and restored old houses we found piles of razor blades on the walls at least a dozen times.’
‘We even found them once in the ceiling of the first floor: they had fallen through the wall from the second floor bathroom, down a hole made for a plumbing pipe and into the ceiling cavity in the kitchen. When we tore down the old plaster ceiling, the razors rained down. Luckily no one was hurt!’