so. many. signs.

Let's take a step back.  You might be thinking, "wow, how did you move forward with this purchase? did you really not see any signs that would let you know how crazy this man was???"

And my answer to that would be: Well Of Course We Did!

The first time we saw the house it was late on a Friday night.  Most of the lights in the house worked but it was still quite dark.  It was obvious that the house would need a lot of work, there was weird outdoor tile on the floors, the bathroom was a hodgepodge of DIYs gone awry complete with loose mismatched tiles and a floor mostly comprised of caulk.  After seeing one bedroom covered in an overwhelming amount of belongings, I turned to enter the second bedroom.  I was met with darkness and a loud whirring of four large outdated computers working overtime and seemingly seconds away from overheating.  I couldn't find the light switch and thought to myself - bedrooms are all pretty similar I don't really neeeed to see this one - and as I turned to leave the room I was faced with an enormous flat screen TV showing the feed of the 8 security cameras that RL had apparently felt the need to install around his property.

So, that was one warning sign.

The Inspection.  This was the beginning of the crack pipe count. Under the kitchen sink, stuffed in the closet, prominently displayed throughout the living room and bathroom.  Some were homemade, others broken but most likely still in use. 

The inspectors knew there would be an entry point to the crawl space somewhere but asked that we give them a call when we find it under all RL's piles of stuff.  They went to take a look at the electrical and found a thin copper wire sticking out of the box heading towards the backyard.  RL had created a home-made electric fence surrounding the entire back yard of the 10,000sqft property.  Yes it was live, yes that's insane.

When we first saw the house in the dark of night in February, we couldn't really see the state of the back yard.  But the light of day revealed 4 gigantic piles of RL's crap covered in tarps, 2 broken down sheds (also filled to the brim with stuff), a boat and....wait for it.... A three story tree house made from random pieces of house siding, doors, and beams we would later realize he took from the garage.

Yeah, more signs.

The previously mention classy act of telling us he'd rather squat in the house until evicted than pay off the liens so the house could be sold.

Yet another sign.

Ok, so maybe we were neck deep in a river in Africa (badum bum - denial), but even with all those warning signs not even our realtor thought RL would try living in the front yard for two weeks after the house closed.  And no one could have grasped the sheer amount of garbage this man had hoarded over the years that would become our responsibility to help him clean up.

It turns out, when you've been working towards a dream for a long time, you will put up with a lot of shit to accomplish it.  Our house might include a zombie-hoarder-drug-addict, but it's Our House!!