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By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
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An Indiana couple renovating their 1890s home got an unexpected fright while ripping out one of the ceilings in their property.
Tori Kanouse and her husband have been busy fixing up the property, located in Springport, with a view to building a small homestead where they can raise animals, grow their own fruit and vegetables, and gain a level of self-sufficiency lacking in modern society.
Renovations can be—and more often than not are—stressful. A 2025 poll of more than 1,000 homeowners commissioned by Block Renovation, an AI renovation platform, found over 85 percent experienced stress during their renovation projects.
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Kanouse reckons she and her husband may have experienced more than most, though. “The past couple of weeks have been chaotic,” she told Newsweek. “Three weeks ago, I had an emergency appendectomy while my husband was recovering from pneumonia. It has felt like one thing after another.”
That was before they even got to the renovation work itself, which Kanouse admits has turned into more of an “emergency project” after they discovered several leaks in the roof and termite damage.
“Unfortunately, insurance wasn’t able to help with the repairs, so we had to wait until we were both healed and then begin teaching ourselves the building and renovation skills needed to tackle the work ourselves,” she said.
But if they thought some termites and a few leaks would be where the issues ended, they were wrong. It all started the day Kanouse and her husband decided to rip out the ceiling in the laundry room of the property.
Kanouse said the plan was to “rip it down to the studs,” meaning remove all the drywall, insulation, flooring, and fixtures.
But as they began doing that in the loft space above the ceiling, Kanouse noticed a series of unusual pieces of material scattered around. She quickly realized what she thought was debris was actually the shed skins of a snake.
“That definitely caught our attention,” she said. “But we hadn’t actually seen a live snake yet, let alone multiple.”
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Unfortunately for Kanouse and her partner, that quickly changed, as the couple realized the space was essentially infested with multiple snakes. As Kanouse put it herself, it was pure “nightmare fuel.”
“When I realized there was an actual snake in the ceiling, I was completely shocked,” she said. “Finding the shed skins was one thing, but seeing a live snake—especially more than one—slithering in the shadows during renovations was something else entirely. It definitely brought our work to a halt for a bit.”
Kanouse made a hasty retreat at this point. She wasn’t alone in doing so, either. “When one of the snakes made an appearance, my husband was on an 8-foot ladder and promptly abandoned it in favor of self-preservation,” she said.
The good news is that the snakes have since been safely removed with the help of a pest control company. Even better, based on the couple’s research, they appear to be rat snakes. “They’re totally harmless and great pest control—the caveat being, well, there are snakes in the ceiling,” Kanouse said.
She doesn’t know how they got there. “Our best guess is that they entered through openings around the roof flashing and found the ceiling space and insulation to be a safe place to shelter,” Kanouse said.
But now it’s all over and the snakes have been moved, she’s able to laugh about it. “The experience has been equal parts surprising, stressful, and funny in hindsight,” Kanouse said.
The renovation of the snake-filled ceiling has brought them another surprise too. “The snakes weren’t the only unusual thing we’ve found during this renovation,” Kanouse said.
“While opening up the walls and ceiling, we’ve also found a coiled snake skeleton wrapped in insulation, a newspaper from 1939, and several old razor blades hidden inside the wall cavity near the bathroom.”
It just goes to show—you never know what’s hiding out of sight in the home.
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