hello all! long time lurker, first time poster!
First let me bore you with some personal details.
TLDR at the bottom. Born and raised in a small town a few hours from Houston, got a job offer here in 2016. Took that offer ASAP to get myself to the big city! Met my SO who grew up here, and for the first two years, we spent every weekend driving around downtown, showing me all the buildings/ landmarks/ graff spots. Eventually we ended up at the infamous downtown hotel, where it was discovered we were both eager to get in and climb to the top. This post is not that, although we did get in and climb it, it was after that I stumbled upon this website!
Since then, I have
lurked my ass off (
read: unhealthy amounts of time) on the rookie forum, the south forum, gone through almost all the photography section (I started from the last post so I wouldn’t miss a thing) and without trying to sound like an extreme creeper (because I definitely feel like one) many of your Flickr pages. With that being said, I have never posted anything because I am afraid that anything I post will be boring as hell compared to y'alls wonderful work, BUT I finally decided fuck it, I’m going to post something. Unfortunately, due to number of children > lack of child care, we have not been exploring since late 2018, so these pictures are from May 2018.
We did not set out to explore on this particular weekend, we were looking at houses for sale. Horrible time to look, as Hurricane Harvey had just come through 7 months prior, so either these houses had seen water and were priced at
“investor special” prices
(read: gutted & unlivable), or it didn't get flooded, and the price went way up because
“nO wAtEr fRoM HaRvEy!!!” We were riding around a neighborhood armed with a real estate app just driving by houses for sell when I noticed this one listed at $85,000 with no pictures of the inside (not a good sign) but it was a very strange looking house on the outside, so we head over to check it out. Parked on the street, hop out, walked up and first thing we notice is a big sign on the window:
THIS IS AN UNSAFE BUILDING. We say to one another, okay what happened in here?? As soon as we start trying to look through the windows, a truck pulls up. We think, ok maybe this is the owner and we can look inside...
A guy gets out, walks up and says, “Are you a realtor?” We say “No, are you?” He says no, pulls out his phone…dials a number…walks up to the door...asks us if its unlocked, we tell him we don't know, we didn't try...
He pushes on the door,
it swings open, then he just walks right in! We looked at each other like WTF is this guy doing? I told my SO, “Well if he's going in so are we!” and we followed right behind him. I wasn't able to take the best pictures as I didn’t want a picture of this random guy walking through the house, but I got what I could.
I have included my photos as well as photos I found today on a realtor site.
On the realtor photos I have put a red mark on the top right corner, so its easier to tell which is which. I wanted to show what it was and then how we found it (they also have some pics I didn’t get of the outside) so I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting their pics. Let me know if so!
TLDR; I’ve never posted because I feel inferior to y’alls amazing work, but I decided I’m sorry/ not sorry if I bore you with this sweet house that was deemed unsafe & for sell somewhere in Houston. On the realtor photos I have put a red mark on the top right corner, so its easier to tell which is which RFRONT by
JA, on Flickr
^the only pic they had of the house that day^
mfront by
JA, on Flickr ^over grown, complete with "this building is unsafe" sign on window^
RMIRROR by
JA, on Flickr
mmirror by
JA, on Flickr
^the open door on the left is the front door^
mgoingup by
JA, on Flickr
RLIVINGROOM by
JA, on Flickr
mlivingroom by
JA, on Flickr
^i'm standing in the same place as they were, but looking up, because HELLO its a badass octagon vaulted ceiling! how could they NOT capture this? if you go back to the first pic, this room is to the right of the front door.^
RBED by
JA, on Flickr
mbed by
JA, on Flickr
^this bedroom is through the French doors by the fire place^
RDOOR by
JA, on Flickr
mdoor by
JA, on Flickr
^bathroom right off this trashed bedroom^
RTUB by
JA, on Flickr
mceilingg by
JA, on Flickr
mtub by
JA, on Flickr
^this room only had a bathtub in it. they really loved their octagons in this house. you can see a door on the right side of the pic , it goes to a half bath^
RTOL by
JA, on Flickr
mtol by
JA, on Flickr
^half bath off the tub room^
RKITCHEN by
JA, on Flickr
mkitchen by
JA, on Flickr
^kitchen^
mupstairs by
JA, on Flickr
^back through the living room and upstairs, heres my pic looking down on the stairs, strange platforms for artwork, statues?^
RTOP by
JA, on Flickr
^their photo of that room^
mtop by
JA, on Flickr
^turned around, those doors go out to the patio on top of the carport, which we didn't go out on for some reason, but the realtors got a pic^
ROUTSIDETOPOFGARAGE by
JA, on Flickr
^their pic of the patio^
RPINK by
JA, on Flickr
RSIDEPINK by
JA, on Flickr
^back inside, through the archway right after you go up the carpet stairs, theres this room, which we will call the pink room^
msidepink by
JA, on Flickr
mpink by
JA, on Flickr
^trashed pink room, now if you look close at the blue structure in between the fire place and the chair...you'll see its open and theres something black in there...^
mspirl by
JA, on Flickr
^its a spiral staircase!!! I didn't get any pics from the top in the pink room,probably because I was moving around the rando guy that was in there with us, and he ended up staying on the phone not saying another word to us while we all looked through this house^
ROUTSIDEBATH by
JA, on Flickr
^now these are the pics I didn't get, this is outside of the room with the bath tub.^
ROUTSIDEPINKROOM by
JA, on Flickr
^and this is outside of the pink room^
So that's it! Hopefully no one jumps my ass talking about "this isn't a real explore cause it was for sale" I know it was kinda a cheap find, but we will never forget this house because of just how strange it was and the strange way we ended up in there! Also, this wasn't in Montrose or the Heights or somewhere like that, all the other houses in this neighborhood looked nothing like this one, they were "normal"
Thanks for looking you guys!