Muzette... I was thinking about you today

[Chayote]

I was watching a TV show called Hoarders and the woman on the show had a hoarding issue that I never thought was possible. People on the show cleaned it up and made it look nice but it made me wonder if you've ever purchased a house full to the ceilings with stuff and if you have, how did you clean it out? On the Hoarders show they removed 37 tons of rubbish. It was a large house... ground floor, upstairs were all the bedrooms and then an attic. The rubbish in the attic was causing the ceilings in the bedrooms to almost collapsing stage.

I was a little confused... it was a three-level house. They termed it as being first floor, second floor and third floor (being the attic). In Australia it would be termed as ground floor, first floor and attic. Just another difference in our languages...

[Vera]

Chayote - Absolutely there are three floors if you count the basement (or lower level) as a floor. We have a full finished basement (lower level), main floor and half a second floor because our foyer is two story. We have two walk in storage rooms on the second floor and one does have an attic access in that room. Plus an attic access in the laundry room. Some houses also have a bonus room which would be part of a 3rd or 4th level. We have a good friend that has a bonus room plus an observation deck to the outside above that to watch the stars - that is a very large home.

[AngID]

Our house has four, full, floors. If it ever burns down I am going straight to jail because I have threatened to do it so many times.

[Sabine]

I think that houses are built so different in different parts of our country. Here in Texas nobody has a basement. When I lived in Kansas we had a basement, a place to go when we had tornado warnings.

[Bean]

I think that houses are built so different in different parts of our country. Here in Texas nobody has a basement. When I lived in Kansas we had a basement, a place to go when we had tornado warnings.

So true! Florida doesn’t have basements and up until about 15/20ish years ago started having 2 level homes. They didn’t previously because of the heat and storms.

Our house here is 3 full levels, the downstairs is called a walkout because it’s not really underground, only some of it.

But Colorado (I should say in the Springs) has stopped building basements. They build the houses very small and really odd layouts. They squeeze as many houses as they can on a street. My sisters neighbors are on top of her. You look out a window and they are right there. Creepy. I couldn’t do that.

[muzette7]

We buy most of our homes at the county tax sales, and it is not always possible to enter the house to see what condition it is in. Usually the neighbors can give you a good idea if there are any major issues. We have had 2 really bad homes this year. One the guy had 5 large dogs running a puppy mill in a 980 sq ft house. It was FULL of feces, like 2 foot deep of dog poop. We had to completely gut it and remove the hardwood floors it was so bad. The other house the elderly man passed away and left it to his son. Super cute outside, but the son had mental issues to say the least. The house was piled to the celling with trash. Like actual bags of rotting garbage. Because the trash was rotting mold grew all over the bottom 3 ft of everything. We ended up gutting the entire house down to the studs. The neighbors had no clue the guy had been living like that.

The worst case though was about 3 years ago. The house was a mess, full of trash. It was the 3rd house we did so at that point we still kind of went through things to see if valuables were left behind. There was an old cell phone and one of the kids charged it to see if it worked. There were videos of the 30 something daughter abusing her invalid mother. The mother was begging for help to go to the bathroom and the daughter was laughing at her and left her to soil herself. We did turn it over to the police, but I do not know if anything ever came of it. I never want to see that kind of stuff again, now we pretty much pitch everything. That video still bothers me to this day.

Come to think of it, we also did a historical mansion that was full of feces. Some people should not have animals. It came out so nice though. I really wanted to live there, but those giant old homes are a full time maintenance nightmare. People do not realize that those kinds of homes had a staff to run things back in the day. Here are the pictures though. Its still my favorite house we ever did.

https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-90095#photo30

[CharleneG]

That’s a beautiful home! I never want to have a 2 story home again but that is nice.

[Chayote]

Thank you, Muzette. That's a really interesting house and I can't imagine it so trashed but after watching the TV show, maybe I just don't want to imagine it. This particular hoarder made it impossible for her and her husband to live in the home. The husband had one chair that he could reach and he slept there as well. He was very underweight because he had lived on rubbish... potato crisps, dry bread, not much else. He was sick with something because he was wearing an oxygen line. The house was going to be condemned and pulled down if it wasn't cleaned up and the workers on the show did it in the nick of time and it looked amazing with new floor coverings, just like the one you restored. Sadly the husband passed away a month after the show.

That video you found would be difficult to watch and I'm glad you handed it to Police. I hope there's a special place in hell for people who abuse the elderly...

[Chayote]

That’s a beautiful home! I never want to have a 2 story home again but that is nice.

I always wanted a two storey house but not now. In fact that's why we are building in Adelaide... most of the houses around our daughter's area are two storey on very small blocks. Stairs are the reason that we cannot stay with our daughter as John is unable to manage them. We will be staying in a hotel while we are there for Andrew's No. 5 birthday (as he says it)

[Chayote]

I think that houses are built so different in different parts of our country. Here in Texas nobody has a basement. When I lived in Kansas we had a basement, a place to go when we had tornado warnings.

Isn't Texas covered in a layer of hard rock? Maybe not all of Texas but I remember when Jessica McClure fell down the well in Midland or Odessa, the main reason they couldn't reach her was because of a thick layer of very dense rock. I'm guessing that's why Texas houses don't have basements.

[Sabine]

I honestly don't know what the reasons are that houses in Texas don't have basements. Yes, parts of Texas has a lot of limestone, but that can't be the reason because people have pools. We had a pool in our previous house. There are 11 houses in our cul de sac and 6 have pools in their backyard. We have family and friends living in North Texas and East Texas and they have no basements but have pools. Good question.

[CharleneG]

I always wanted a two storey house but not now. In fact that's why we are building in Adelaide... most of the houses around our daughter's area are two storey on very small blocks. Stairs are the reason that we cannot stay with our daughter as John is unable to manage them. We will be staying in a hotel while we are there for Andrew's No. 5 birthday (as he says it)

When we were looking for our house here we gave our realtor very strict criteria...it must be one story and it absolutely had to have a 3 car garage. Everything else that came with it was a bonus. We had been looking online at homes up here for about 13 years and when our realtor found this one we knew we were going to buy it. It was just perfect. We had gotten to the point we hated the house in CA and cussed the stairs every time we had to go up. We love our one level house!

[Vera]

We do have a 1 1/2 story house with a full finished basement. But, our master bedroom, bath and laundry are on the main floor along with a half bath, family room, kitchen, dining room, office and mud room. The upstairs is for guests only. Works for us. As I get older, stairs can be a killer. Just last week I was at a neighbor's house. It is very contemporary and beautiful inside. However, EVERY room is a step down. It was built in an amphitheater fashion with the kitchen in the back (bottom). You really have to watch your step as you go from room to room - another step down.

[muzette7]

I lived on one house for 42 years until 4 years ago, then we bought one to flip and I fell in love with it. It was a century home, but not a big huge one. It had a giant kitchen with over 20 ft of counter space and I shiplapped that area. It was very charming, but it had stairs. I never lived in a house with stairs and quickly learned I hated them. Hubs brought me to look at the house we live in now because it also was supposed to be a flipper. The house was a 15 yr old ranch, with no stairs. Not a single step anywhere. Once I saw the mater bedroom had its own bathroom, that was it. We put in a fancy kitchen and updated the flooring and bathrooms. The house does have builder grade tubs. The tub and surround is all one piece so there is no grout. He wanted to put in new tubs and tile the whole thing but I said absolutely not. We did that at the last house and let me tell you, those subway tile showers may look nice but are horrible to keep clean. The builder grade tubs we have are so stinking easy to keep clean. We are doing a ranch house for my mother in law, and she wanted the same tub I have because its so low maintenance.