You find the strangest things

The hall, before yesterday, was a rectangular space with a small closet to the right of the front door (next to the door to the garage), a pole holding up the ceiling, and another closet/storage space across the whole of the back wall. This storage space was divided into two: another wall, parallel to the back wall of the house and front of the closet almost divided the space into two (it was supporting the stairs). Behind this wall was the back wall of the house. And at the bottom, the space was boxed in.

Now, the closet wall has been removed. The old stairs have been removed, enabling the demolition of the wall-inside-the-closet. And the boxing-in has gone too.

Guess what's running along the bottom of the outside wall, inside a hall that smelled and felt cold and damp when we first walked in?

A baseboard radiator.

I'm wondering if there was a special reason it had to be hidden inside a box inside a closet inside another closet. (In the picture, the yuckky carpet tiles were the floor of the outer closet, and the pinkish clean tiles were the floor of the inner closet.)