A self build house project diary
by Oliver Cannell

Storing information and goodies for the future in a hidden time capsule

Before all the internal walls have been built, we thought it would be good to hide a time capsule.

I always had it in my mind to hide a time capsule inside the house, when we built it but hadn’t really thought too much about what to actually put in it.

Now that the internal walls are being built and the plasterboard is going up, it’s become a “now or never” situation. So with a little haste I’ve gathered together some info about us, the house build and news from the day to include in the capsule. Hopefully someone in the distant future will find this interesting.

About the house

This wasn’t too hard as there are plenty of drawings, photos, supplier brochures and costings spreadsheets which could be included. In fact, there are too many to include - so we had to whittle the bundle down to a nice little selection.

About us

This was a little harder. I didn’t want to include anything too personal, but it would have been a shame not to include enough information to enable people to get a feel for who we are and what we’re about. So I included a copy of my CV and some printouts from Facebook profiles.

About the era

Again, quite tricky to get this right - but some newspapers from the day, a printout from BBC News homepage and some funny items from the day seemed to work well.

The capsule

I used a rigid plastic box to seal everything inside, so fingers crossed this should last a long long time. It should be waterproof (in case of a leaky roof) and I don’t think bugs or insects will get into it.

It would be nice to think that the house lasts long into the future, after we are long gone, so that this time capsule isn’t discovered for decades (centuries?) later. Or if it’s discovered in the near future, hopefully it will be added to for more people to find later still.

Next entry: Plastering progress (Friday 23rd January 2015)

Previous entry: Bathroom and en-suite sanitary items ordered (Wednesday 21st January 2015)

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