We Bought a Vacant 70s Compound With a House and Two Shops! Full Tour and Major Life Updates

For the past 4 years, we have not been completely honest with you. We've had to hide a lot of our lives, and now we don't anymore because we just bought this place here and we're going to show it all to you right now. That is the house. >> [sighs] >> That is one of the shops. There's another one over there. And this is the big one. I would call this one abandoned. So, some of you may remember that long time ago we used to live in a motor home and then we stopped talking about it. We always live in the motor home. We just couldn't talk about it anymore because where we were staying in it was um illegal. We kind of had to hide. And uh we were just renting a shop and lived in that thing in front of it for 4 years in the last last spot. This house here was built in 1975 by the same guy who lived in it. He was a home builder and he built this house for his family and he ran his home building business out of a bigger shop over there, which we're going to show you. Outside of the property itself hasn't really been maintained in let's say at least 10 years. And the house itself has been vacant for at least 5 years. I won't say abandoned cuz it wasn't abandoned. But they they really did is keep the roof from falling in. It was It was basically abandoned. Nope, nothing was going on in there. The woman of the house lived here alone for at least 15 years, I think. >> Yeah. So, she didn't have a husband to trim the trees or help her with maintenance or anything. He was in the process of building that garage there and almost finished it and he had a stroke and couldn't work anymore. So, it's like 90% done. We'll show you that in a minute. This place has a lot of really, really cool features. So, there's a two-car attached garage and then there's another garage down there. It's half the basement. And as you can see, there is stuff everywhere because when we bought it they left a lot of stuff inside it. And uh Yeah, it and uh outside There's just stuff everywhere. And this is the big one. The guy used this for woodworking and kept some materials in there. It's got a tractor shed behind it. I would call this one abandoned. And you'll see you Why? You'll see why we go in here real quick. Yeah. I'll open the door so you can see better. And yeah, there's tons of stuff in here. It's not organized. So, this is actually how it is. This is real life. We just had to get everything out of our old shop and over here as quickly as possible. Now, this garage door was all seized up. I It had been open for probably 20 years cuz we put it down and the wood beams up there were completely different color than all the other ones. And we didn't even have time to clean it out or get any of the stuff in here that was out before. So, there's lots of random building materials, tons of wood ton of tile >> tile, pallets of tile. Interesting place. He's kind of had his work station over here with saws and stuff. He had a I don't know if he ever got to the point, but he was insulating it probably to put AC in here and I think we'll finish that concept and use this kind of as a fab station eventually >> area. Yeah. >> But like look at the some of the cool tools and stuff in Yeah. Yeah, like a band saw, drill press Sears Craftsman Yeah, and it's old. So, you know we can fix it and make it work good. And what's funny is I never bought a decent-size band saw or a drill press because I didn't want to have to move them cuz we were renting. How does it work out that those two things are part of the deal. They're already in here. I mean, there's like there's a whole granite countertop here, another one there skeet shooting targets, some old 70s like We find new stuff in here all the time cuz we don't We were just come here with the trailer, unload stuff go back, get more. We didn't really look around a whole lot. Like one of the last times I was in here, I found boxes and boxes of door hinges. Really? Just the hinges, like the hinge assembly. That's funny. >> Yeah. It's kind of difficult cuz there's a lot of things in here that will are really no use, but you don't want to just throw it all away because there are a lot of things in here that would be useful to us. We just have to go through it and Yeah. figure out what those are. All this tile and shingles pieces of wood all these shelves back here came with ladders a walking board thing Oh, I didn't even see that. The walking board? Yeah. >> Yeah. We could We could have used that in the house. I think a lot of these shelves will probably just take out and then after the tractor shed it drops down pretty hard. So, I don't know if you can like do anything back there. I haven't even walked back there yet, but I haven't either. There's probably cool stuff back there, too. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff in the woods, too. There's just stacks and stacks of old records and like this Winston Cup magazine from 1981 was in here. Probably delivered to this address in 1981. It was a random Jeff Gordon plate frame still in the bag. Look at this. The cab of a tractor trailer of Rainier Racing. I know there's more. Yeah, there's got to be more. But there's like old Loretta Lynn and stuff like that, which I know you don't listen to country, but I do and I'm sure some of our followers do and that's like a really big deal. Yeah, I think this building, they called it a shed. It's far from a shed, but it is not I mean, like you couldn't put HVAC in here the way it is. There It was built with a dirt floor first. It just had these posts in the ground. And from the shelf, this one started to sink. So, at some point we'll have to figure out how to jack that back up and brace it. You can see it must have been happening here, too because there's another piece of wood lag bolted to that post that sit that sits on the concrete keep it from sinking more. So, this won't be the primary workshop. It'll more just be storage and parking and like dirty fab. And we will use that one down there as the primary nuts and bolts workshop. Put all the cutting and grinding tool equipment up here. If you need to make a piece for something you're working on down there, you just walk over here, make your mess, and then carry it back over there. Yeah. And deal with it cuz we have legs. >> off this area from that area. So, once we actually like clean stuff up, the the dirtiness can be in there and not right here. So, the stuff we're storing isn't like getting grinding dust and stuff. Wow, that's from driving. Yeah, that was from hauling it over here. Got a lot of bugs stuck to it. Some of the oil kind of splashed out, so it was sticky. I haven't seen this since you guys moved it over here. Oh, yeah. Look at her. I like that sign. Hand-painted signs in here. >> [laughter] >> Shelby, come here. There's like crown molding pieces and like solid wood bead board. This building is about 72 ft long and either 45 or 48 wide. The survey guy said it was 48, but I measured 45, so We figured be cheaper and easier to put the house back together than it would be to build shops of this size, especially with all that concrete. Concrete's so expensive now. And putting a house back together we can do that ourselves with basic things. We don't need concrete truck, cranes, and equipment all that whatever to do it. Let me walk back there. Yeah, let's show the tractor shed back here. But this is really the only part of the property that has grass to mow. And if we keep turning trailers around on it, we probably won't have to mow cuz it'll all die. But you know what? It's my grass and I can kill it if I want to. Yeah, it's big. So, I believe it's like 50 ft that way and 25 or so deep because the this building is 45, 48, whatever. And this is wider on both sides. So, if we wanted to eventually, we could put concrete in here enclose it, put doors on it, and have another garage or take this roof line and then build a Mickey Mouse fun house and extend it out to join up to this, concrete the whole thing and level that out a bit more and then have like a separate level you drive down in here at. That would be the coolest if we could make that like the the bus garage down here and figure out a way to join these together. Some years and a lot of money later but the potential's there and that's what's fun to think about. I guess we got some scaffolding. I never really walked back around in here, either. Wow, I really didn't I'm not making this up. I didn't realize there were that many bricks here. Well, there was the pavers that they used for the driveway. Those are those ones that are on the front porch. Oh. The one you said looks like Wendy's. Some of these are for the house, too. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. We got a lot and a bunch of those that we think we can use those for all kinds of stuff. Let's walk back here a little bit. I've never been back here. Oh, man. This is where the snakes are. I'm sure we're going to be finding interesting stuff in here for a really long time. There's a whole big pile of rocks and stuff whatever something they used for fill back there. Is that saying fiberglass? I don't know what it's made out of but it's not metal. It's some type of Like weird composite. Fiber composite, yeah. Somebody construction people tell us what that's called cuz he used it on the back of that garage over there. Like there's more piles of bricks over there that just have stuff grown up through them. Look how big that tree is and it's growing up through those pallets of pavers. This may have been the old school method of use whatever you have as fill and he wanted to make the yard bigger. Is that a tree growing out of that pallet? Yeah. What the heck? Or was that just a branch that I don't know. I want to see how old this Firestone tire here is. Look at how this clip is. How long? We haven't shown you the house or the other garage yet cuz we're looking at garbage in the woods. But [snorts] that's what we do here. Yeah, we need to make a flat spot to park the Newell in for now and probably do that here. Be nice to get rid of that extra fence post so we could pull trailers all the way through. So right now it's a little bit tight to swing with a large trailer. But this garage here would be the newest building on the property and all this junk out here was stuff that was in there cuz we closed on it. Then we came the next day, took everything that was in here, threw it outside, and the day after that the floor guy came and coated the floor, which we'll show you right here now. The story behind this log cabin type finish was the guy built a log cabin in the mountains and had some leftover material. So he built this. Now I don't know if that was actually what happened or if that was just a story he told his wife cuz it seems a little bit odd to for a professional home builder to have so much leftover material that you could build a garage this big out of. I don't know. What I don't know that I would like some feedback on is how do we insulate this if there's no house wrap on the studs before the siding goes on? Cuz you want to have some kind of vapor pest barrier before you put insulation between the studs, but there's kind of holes in here where the knots of the wood are. So I'll have to do some research on that. But this one we're going to finish out real nice, which is why we did the floor already. There was vines growing through it and birds living inside here. Yeah. >> Turtles, lots of nests in here. Yeah, birds' nests on the door opener. There's still one up there. The eaves aren't finished. I guess he didn't get that far. We got to mark out where we want to add more receptacles before we do any of that stuff. If anybody has any good ideas on where you're going to want a receptacle that is not blatantly obvious. He built these real nice workbenches and radius the edges and all that. We're going to leave that in here. The studs are kind of spaced out pretty far. When you walk around up there, I can feel the wood moving under me. I don't really like that. Doesn't feel comfortable, but um I don't know how you would brace that to make it hold more weight before we put drywall up there, too. And if you notice why there's almost nothing in here and that other one is jam-packed full of crap, it's because this one's going to get worked on first and it's easier to work on when there's nothing in here. All right, I think we're ready to move on to the house now. That back room back there has a a wood burner oil burner heater system for the house that's been disconnected a long time ago. Um I want to utilize that. >> Yeah, we need to get that thing fired back up. Especially if it can run on waste oil, that would be super convenient. And this front driveway loop has been super convenient for pulling in and turning around trailers. As you can see, it's been overgrown for a really, really long time. These trees are way too big to be here and they started pushing up the driveway in some places from the roots. Yeah, none of these stones are really held in place anymore. Yeah, they're kind of just sitting there. Carpenter bees and wood boring beetles and all that stuff is eating like all the wood everywhere. Yeah, you see the the holes on all the shutters. Yeah, for mostly from what we can find and the pest control guy told us is they're not active, but they've had a long time to come and go as they please. So I'll have to do something about that. And the gutters have to be cleaned. They don't have the gutter guards on the front of the house. Oh. It's only on the sunroom, I think. Yeah, the trees are nice in a long way cuz it is really a lot cooler back here than it is anywhere else when it's hot out, but it's also really dark. Feels like overcast all the time even though it's not. And um I'll let you explain why the house looks like this. I talked about the garages forever. So uh Explain the floor. What's the What the floor was the biggest hurdle. Yeah, the floor was the biggest hurdle. It was just subfloors in here and the the praiser were and the bank wouldn't approve a loan without doing a bunch of work. The bunch of work was we had to cover all the bare floors. We had to paint all the bare drywall and we had to put together all of the bathrooms that were torn apart. Like they ripped out the vanities and the toilets and we had to make all that stuff work before they would pass it for some reason. Which is really scary to sink money into something before it's yours. Yeah. Yeah, we had to work on this place for 2 weeks straight before we even technically owned it. And that was a little nerve-racking and it was irritating because we couldn't do stuff the way we wanted to and we knew that we were just making a mess we'd have to go back and fix later, but and sometimes you just have to take situations for what they are instead of getting mad about the way you wish it was. So we just did the work, got it done and now it's our house and we can do whatever we want with it. Yeah, they uh partially partially scraped [clears throat] the popcorn ceilings in every room. Yeah. >> finished it. So we had to finish scraping the popcorn ceilings in every room. That was one of the stipulations. >> Yeah, and paint it. >> And paint it cuz it couldn't be like bare. And this addition here I think was done in 1982. I have that door opened up to air it out cuz it smells. Good. Yeah, it smelled weird in here. That skylight leaked. There was a little bit of mold on the roof. And these doors are very obviously uh past their service life. Oh yeah, those ones won't even open. Yeah, they're totally seized up. >> to use your entire body weight to open it. It won't open all the way. It's a pretty neat room though. It is. >> these people like to have parties. They got this Jacuzzi in here. I've I've heard things called Jacuzzis my whole life, but I've never actually seen a name brand real Jacuzzi before. This is probably straight out of 1982. Now speaking of neat things this house came with, we'll go back into that room in a second. It had one of these fancy NuTone deals in here with a 8-track player that could plumb into the whole house. And it goes outside. >> Yeah, it goes outside, dude. It doesn't work anymore, but it's still here. And it has central vac. All stuff in 1975. I think these these must have been the rich people in 1975 to have stuff like that. I think I've only been in this room one time. Decent in here and whatever this monstrosity is. This is where they kept all the firewood during the winter and they brought it in through these double doors and put it in there. New garage. Oh, that must be where the power comes in cuz I never saw um anything on the breaker in the basement for that, but it comes off of here. And this thing's a freaking tank. It's got a light on on it, so it might not be that far away from working. >> working again, yeah. This place has been vacant for so long that you see big spiders like that and half of them were dead. When you were down in the basement garage when we first got here, it was like a scene out of Jumanji or something. The back wall there's just like hundreds of daddy longlegs all over the place. The We got that mostly under control now. It's got a very chopped up 70s floor plan and it came with this cool statue thing of Bill Elliott already on the counter. First time we ever came to look at the house, we had Bill Elliott, Andrew Jackson, and this guy. I don't know who who's this guy. The conductor. $84. Wow. >> Who would have paid $84? That's like a thousand dollars in today's money. Oh, and it came with these, too. >> How much was Bill Elliott? No, it doesn't say. Wouldn't collect a collection of Bill Elliott, Andrew Jackson, and the conductor in your kitchen make sure you do a good job. Yeah, so we covered the floor with the cheapest thing possible, which is just this sheet vinyl that looks like wood. >> Cuz uh they never uh finished. Like they started tearing the tile out, but never finished it. And it would have taken too long and cost too much money to deal with all that right now. Yeah, we pretty much had about 10 days to do all this and that was non-negotiable cuz we bought this place from the heirs which were the two sisters that grew up here and made um For sale by owner. Yeah, for sale by owner. Found this place on Facebook Marketplace if you can believe it. Bought a freaking house on Facebook Marketplace. That's pretty funny. Mhm. Cuz we looked at Zillow and realtor and everything every day for like 2 years. We must have gone to look at >> [snorts] >> I don't know, 10 houses or something. They all sucked. They all wanted way too much money for them and they were all on some busy road. And we're like, this just sucks. We're going to be in And all the listings are incredibly misleading. Yeah. >> Like the the pictures are filtered. Like you're you're getting catfished. And every freaking inch of this place was covered in dust from the drywall. Oh, yeah. >> Cuz we had to finish all the drywall cuz there was wallpaper in every room. Mhm. And they ripped the wallpaper off. So it all needed to be like patched or sanded or whatever. But like things like this, like even if you change the light bulbs, they won't work. So there's only one light bulb in there. Luckily the inspector didn't care if we left the tape on the stuff so we can continue doing what we were doing without having to take the time to re-tape all this. He didn't even notice this. This wouldn't stop anybody from falling down the stairs. Thank god he didn't look. Really like there was bare wood on the stairs, too. Yeah. Cuz it's weird. It's like nice wood here and then it switches to that stuff where there was carpet under it like it was a real rug pull on that deal but we had to cover it up with some fake sticky wood. It sucks. And we're like, why do we have to…