It's bad from the outside, but the inside is so much worse. And it gets worse the more you look at it. So many details that are just so awful. Living in this "house" is probably miserable.
This is the first time I've seen a "it just keeps getting worse" post and actually agreed. I went in n just expecting terrible siding, then the inside of the house, then the chairs, then the lights, then more chairs, the carpet, the exposed wiring, why are there chairs there?, it just kept escalating. Thank you for this.
I concur. Most "it gets worse" style posts have one or two odd things. This one truly delivered.
It's a 3 bedroom (all queens?), 5 bath house with seating for 20. It's either some crazy orgies at night in only a few beds, a business call center kind of place, or they had massive family gatherings with alarming regularity. Of course there's always the cult option, which means it could also be "all of the above".
There is the wall of family photos on shelves... Maybe family get together center?
What's up with the industrial scale sewing equipment?
I made my wife look at it, then I had to go back because she noticed even more insanity. It just kept getting worse every time we went through the pictures.
I was really disappointed that in Exterior Features there was Vinyl Siding listed but it wasn't also listed on the Interior Features. I would've lost it at that.
I finally got to a bedroom picture where it looked like painted walls, then zoomed in to see it was carpet. My only explanation is Mormonism, as I have only ever seen carpeted walls in my chapel growing up. Mind you, that was rough spiky carpet seemingly installed to discourage sleeping against the wall.
If you have any idea where to get that sisal fabric wall covering, I'd love to know; it's amazing for cat scratching posts.
I'm pretty sure they put that there because it protected the walls from scuffs and damage--especially the kind caused by moving folding tables and chairs all the time--without showing dirt from the hands of grubby kids. It wasn't in every ward building, but it was definitely pretty common.
See, this was one of my first thoughts, either some kind of cult-like-thing, or it's one of those weird multigenerational homes where four+ generations of people lived, and the parents rooms are close enough to eachother that they can hear when babies are being made.
When someone dies, everyone "upgrades" to their parents living space, and the normal-ish bedrooms, aka "nice" bedrooms (compared to the other bedrooms in this horror show), are reserved for the oldest family members.
The question I have, aside from... You know, everything, is... How many ceiling fans do you really need? Jesus.
Actually, when someone dies, they get propped up in the constant funeral home that can be seen starting at picture 47 or 48, and only then can the ritual begin.
Here's my two shots in the dark to explain this monstrosity:
Retired couple buys one of those workshop/huge garage and apartment combos. They decide to turn the workshop into an event space for weddings.
They add a few conveniences for the wedding party, like a couple extra bedrooms to get ready, and a black and red honeymoon suite. The decor is hideous because retired wife is old af and it looks good to her. Retired husband sucks at DIY, like electrical and room layout, but doesn't let small things like planning get in his way.
Grandson works at a siding company that mainly does B2B installs and often has leftovers. Sometimes he grabs other overage from the project after talking to other tradies, like a banister here and there. Maybe an orphan cabinet base.
Grandson wants to start his own siding business one day so he is happy to practice installs on the wedding rental building.
Alternative: Fundie church does secret child marriages here and the couple that maintains the property is allowed to live there as well. The ugliness of the property is because they're purely utilitarian and just need a facade of wedding shit because it's not really about the wedding as much as it's about keeping it on the down-low.
If it's recently defunct or relocating, I'd bet this is the parsonage, assembled on a shoestring budget from the church offering, and using whatever materials they could source as absolutely cheaply as possible.
I'm guessing that either a member of the congregation or family connection of same is a siding guy and was able to get all of this for free or obscenely cheap from somewhere, or was able to get it donated, and rather than waste it or decline what they couldn't put on the outside, they decided to save money on drywall and paint and put it inside as well.
Same with the furniture, etc. this just reeks of "super tight budget but with excesses in certain odd specific areas because we got it donated".
You may have heard of PVC (Poly VINYL Chloride I think) cladding - same thing. In the UK it’s predominately used for soffit and fascia (the normally white plastic bits between the top of a house wall and the beginning of the roof tiles where your gutter lives) It’s worth noting that PVC cladding is only to “pretty-up” finished buildings. It has zero construction strength but when fitted properly will stop all water penetration. Give it a wash once a year and it’s as good as new.
Holy hell, this entire interior looks like it could be hosed down, time after time, because it's made for repeated indoctrination/orgy/murder of cults with easy cleanup. Unbelievable price, though...
Did anyone notice that the garage interior photos show the misaligned joists about 3/4 of the way back over the truck/jimmy?
I'm not entirely sure they're actually attached to anything.
Oh, and no code inspector ever saw that wiring.
Edit: oh, and the never ending AC unit chaos. They even vent multiple units into the enclosed garage! That just kind of overheats it and returns the entropy to the house?
Favorite AC unit placement: in the shower with its own little upper tier curtain.
Second favorite cooling feature: the structural box fans in the walls.
This should have been entirely furnished with those cheap white plastic patio chairs and tables. I seen some, but whoever built this clearly can add much more.
At first, I thought this must be some abandoned barracks or aircraft hangar that got retrofitted into a private residence, but then I saw it was purpose built in 2004.
While I'd rather seen neat conduit, the reality is that Romex is permissible in a lot of states. Romex is a real pain in the ass if you ever need to run new wiring though.
I’d prefer the longhouse’s controlled open flame to that jumble of wire, which will lead to an uncontrolled open flame at an unpredictable place and time.
Whoever wired this “house” should be charged with attempted murder.
It just looks like there's barely any natural light in the areas where you'd want it. The house interior, aside from everything else that's wrong with it, feels dark and cramped. A recipe for depression.
To balance things out, there’s something to laugh at wherever you look. Indoor siding. Carpeted walls. Office chairs in the “cafeteria”. The list goes on.
Yes, that generic downstairs with the massive number of tables and no living area, and the large closet upstairs with all the costumes, yes, surely this house was only used for people to live in, uhn-hunh, yeah.
The idea of shower controls on the outside is solid if you have a thermostatic shower valve, that way you can turn your shower on & have it be at the right temp for you before you get in.
However in this instance it just adds to the bizzaro feel to the while thing
The liminal backroom/vaporwave aesthetic hallway in the master bedroom is what really got me. Finally numbed to the siding, office chairs, and carpet and then the hall of mirrors comes in to seal the deal.
Does Arkansas just not have building codes? Surely they can't actually sell it like this. There is no way you can bring this monstrosity up to code for less than the cost of burning it down and building something else.
Arkansas is I think the only state that doesn't enforce habitability for rental properties. By that I mean a landlord could rent you an apartment that is unlivable, like if it had black mold, or say literally didn't even have a roof, and as a renter, there's nothing you could do about it except walk away including any money you'd already paid in rent.
Building codes also vary by state/county/local. Some of these tiny towns probably have much lower standards with building codes.
I mean it was mostly rhetorical, code is adopted at the state level and localities can only make it more strict. Arkansas is seemingly pretty up to date on their adopted codes so I have to imagine they were in 2004 as well. I'm mostly familiar with electrical and I know that shit wouldn't have passed inspection in 2004. So either codes are completely unenforced in this location or they did a bunch of
modifications without a permit that should make it illegal to sell the dwelling until they get inspected.
Bonus: they're gonna have to rip that interior siding and wall carpeting off to inspect the wiring anyway.
Looks like a novice or idiot did the siding. It appears instead of overlapping each piece of siding and hiding the line by varying the distances they just slapped some j channel on and called it good. I bet that siding leaks like a sieve.
Even stranger, they also used vinyl siding on the interior... but they used much longer runs and only have the occasional channel or corner. I wonder if someone got a BUNCH of vinyl siding cut-off of varous lengths, and then burned through the longer stock inside first!
We like to call ourselves a family. Noooo judgements.
Anyhow. Dinner at six, and we shall commence the baphomet ceremony promptly at eight. Did you bring the goat? I can't believe how often I have to remind people-the goat! No goat. No ceremony.
Anyhow. You'll find a robe in the walk-in closet upstairs. First left.
Putting aside the wtf of it all, looking at the house subjectively, it would be a decent, possibly great, starter home.
The layout isn't entirely insane, there's a ton of space inside. It looks like the framing isn't half bad.... To my untrained eye, it has good "bones". The interior design and aesthetic choices are questionable at best, even for the most "normal" looking areas, but buy a case of beer and invite your friends over for a weekend and get most of the interior ripped down, and drywall installed and painted, and you're off to a good start.
Don't get me wrong, it would be a monster task. 4000 sq ft of siding to rip out and replace? Hell. That sucks.
Replace a lot of the fixtures, mainly all the stupid ceiling fans, especially the ones so high up they won't do anything, install some forced air HVAC or at least upgrade the Air conditioner situation and you would be having a grand time living in this place.
I'd probably rip off most of the external siding too and replace that with something a bit more interesting too, but with all the money you'll save by this being so inexpensive (compared to more palatable houses that are similar in size) and you'd get yourself a pretty nice place.
That being said, as is, this place is at best, a lot of questionable choices, at worst, pure nightmare fuel.
My partner thinks it's a converted chicken coop. I can't say that they don't have a point on that one.
There's no room for insulation above the ceiling, no place to run ducts for central HVAC, and the rooms above the 2,000 sq ft garage will be extra hard to keep thermally regulated. This house is super expensive to keep comfortable, and I would bet the window AC units are not up to the task of regulating indoor humidity and the whole structure is a moldy biohazard.
I agree with your partner. This structure looks like it was originally designed for agricultural use. Maps show there's a farmers field a few lots up the road.