by I’m ashamed to say I may have thrown a couple of these away when I first started pulling the trim assuming they were not worth using with the new wiring forthcoming. At the time this house was built, 1924, outlets were incorporated into the floor trim moulding, which does not meet today’s code. The house doesn’t have a ton of outlets, currently, and all of those that still had covers looked like the one on the right. After finding the hidden jewels with the light fixtures, I decided to start removing the remaining covers and was shocked to find they were actually metal. I only have eight, but after about 5 minutes of scrubing I was able to reveal more gold or brass.
It’s really amazing this house had not burned down. A family lived in the house at least as early as four years ago and they utilized the existing knob and tub wiring. There was charring behind almost every plate and in the bedrooms the floor trim was actually burnt on the backside. In one room there are signs of an actual fire. Modern electronics just had no place in the house in its current state. I’ll be bringing everything up to code, which includes probably quadrupling the number of outlets in the house. I’ll have to decide which room will get these eight gems. I found a site that sales them, but at $10.50 a pop you’ll see the modern, cheap, plastic covers everywhere else.
So interesting….