We Bought a Hoarder House – part 2

So now that you know all about how we came to buy a hoarder house, aren’t you dying to know what we found in it???????

Well, I sure was! The day we closed was agonizing. We had gone through the walk through and knew there was still a TON of stuff in the home. But after the closing, we came back and saw that the previous owner’s car was still there… Oh. No. I thought: this is not happening.

We now legally own the house and we may have a squatter on our hands… like what if she never left??? Not wanting a direct confrontation, or the first moments in the house we now owned to be weird because the previous owner is awkwardly still there, we drove away.

Oh the agony…. I ate my sub sandwich with great anticipation as our realtor, Stephen, called the seller’s agent and lawyer to try and get a hold of her.  An hour passed and we had no word from either, so we decided to drive back over.  THANKFULLY… she had left. *giant sigh of relief* The last thing we wanted was to have a confrontation or worse, deal with an eviction the mess that comes with that.

We finally got to enter OUR hoarder house. Oh my, friends… Jake had wisely decided that we would not clean anything that day, just walk the house and take it all in. Because it was overwhelming in a major way. Piles of junk here, heaps of poop over there, and wads and wads of paper towels scattered all over the home.

These are pictures I took on the day of close. You can see that not a whole lot moved since we had originally viewed the property. If anything, things were even more strewn about after she had the movers come through.

That evening we started sifting through some piles to see what we would find. I honestly can’t even remember what we first saw… there were so so many things there that they all started to blend together.

Just found this picture… ha! This is the only singular item picture I took that night, so it must’ve really impressed me. (Glad this beautiful piece is now displayed in my best friend’s dining room!)

We left that night feeling tired and pretty well in over our heads… But nevertheless, we arrived the next morning with renewed vigor to tackle the clean up!

(This is my renewed vigor face…. Jk!)

There ended up being so many helpful things left at the house.  Mainly: thousands of paper towel rolls, garbage bags, and about 6 or 7 metal shelving units that came in clutch for our estate sale.

Jake’s first project that morning was to replace the *nasty* toilet with a new one so that we could do our business without totally gagging. (He loves it when I take pictures of him next to toilets… mwahaha)

[lgc_column grid=”50″ tablet_grid=”50″ mobile_grid=”100″ last=”false”][/lgc_column][lgc_column grid=”50″ tablet_grid=”50″ mobile_grid=”100″ last=”true”][/lgc_column]

Oh, did you notice that window in the bathroom? Why, yes, it is looking into the living room…. how lovely! 😉

Our good friends (and realtor), Stephen and Hope, were lifesavers in this whole ordeal. They were side by side with us as we dug through every inch of junk and feces.  I took off work a few days that week because, people, it took us at least FOUR long days even with 4 bodies vigorously sorting through cat urine soaked items (am I harping on that too much??) and either tossing them in the dumpster or saving them for the sale.

So, I’ve gotten this far… and although I intended to show you the many treasures we found… I’m feeling like this is getting long and I need a whole post to dedicate to the wackiness. In the next post you will see the treasure hunt garage sale mania. 😉