Waukegan Hoarder's Mansion, Part 4

Down the final set of stairs we go, to see what we can see.

I kind of had an idea.

Yup.

Though there were definitely some interesting finds for someone willing to explore.

The basement was huge -- like the rest of the house. A collection of rooms laid out like a maze. And packed.

I think it's important to say that it's quite possible the house was never in this kind of shape while it was being lived in. A lot of what we've seen could be the result of so many people going through this place, attacking it the way a school of piranhas go after a cow that's wandered too far into the Amazon River.

Also, those are some pretty awesome tables in the lower-left corner.

Sure, there was a lot of stuff here.

But that's certainly no crime. Not here in America.

And there were some beautiful things to be found.

Even though I'd spent more than an hour here, I kept looking around, sure that I'd see something I'd missed earlier, or something that someone else had unearthed.

A little gem like this. A Christmas or birthday present, put away and saved for all those years.

I took one last look around.

I found this, which sort of broke my heart.

And this, which kind of made it feel better.

Waukegan Hoarder's Mansion, Part 3

A peacock and parrot guarded the stairway to the third floor.

Birds were kind of a recurring theme.

I don't think the third floor was lived in much during the past twenty years. If it it had been used for anything, it was storage. A place to put stuff and forget about it.

This had been a bedroom once. There was a bed somewhere beneath that riot of zebra print and clothes of every color. Note, also, the mannequin hips and leg standing guard.

I explored the third floor alongside a hectic young man who was busily sorting and setting aside piles of things. He saw me straightening these yellow vinyl boots to take a picture of them, and let me know, "Those are mine."

If he was looking for the mate to a red patent-leather platform shoe, I found it next door in the attic.

I found a bathroom up here as well. That black-and-white color scheme must have looked dramatic at one time, but with the mess of so many years -- and that lone felt Santa face lost among it -- it also seemed a bit ominous.

Kind of cool, kind of funny, custom-made I'm betting and, quite possibly, awkward to use.

This high attic window had an impressive view of even more stuff outside and in the garage.

This place was literally a prop master's dream.

Quite possibly the world's prettiest garbage cans.

On Friday, we'll go through the basement and finish up.

Waukegan Hoarder's Mansion, Part 2

So up the stairs I went, eager to see what I'd find at the top.

Bedroom One was just to the left, and probably one of the less dense rooms in the house. It held items of a vaguely African nature.

And this light fixture.

Also, the first of many closets jam-packed with clothes, including this purple sequined skirt and top. It may be a little much in some people's book, but was certainly in keeping with the rest of the place.

Bedroom Two had this interesting twig bed in the center -- surrounded by stacks and piles of more clothes and stuff.

There was so much of it, it became kind of anonymous and difficult to distinguish where one thing ended and another began.

The most interesting thing about Bedroom Three was this wallpaper and the Victorian-style light fixture that went with it. This is just one of several fixtures like this throughout the house.

Here's another in Bedroom Four, which also held a tiny day bed, too small for anyone but a child to use comfortably. I think of this as "The Bird Room."

Because of this wall covering.

Which really does deserve a closer look. It wasn't paper -- it was fabric, and there was something distinctly disturbing about it.

Another packed closet. This place would have been a gold mine for a vintage clothes shopper with the right size and frame of mind.

Bedroom Four was the master suite. It sat at the end of a short hallway, with this mylar wallpaper on the ceiling. One of the strangest things I've seen in a house, but just one of many I'd see in this one.

As rooms in this house went, it was actually one of the least strange. At least until you took a closer look.

For example, it took me a while to notice this odd floral curtain/butterfly valance combo. In a way, it almost worked.

But then the mirrored ceiling above the bed caught my eye, and every smarmy joke about that sort of thing immediately came to mind.

The walk-in closet was piled high with black garbage bags with who-knows-what inside.

The attached bath featured a toilet seat and lid embedded with sand and shells. Using this must have made the user feel like they were relieving themselves amidst the relaxing splendors of a tropical paradise.

On Wednesday, we'll explore the third floor.

Waukegan Hoarder's Mansion, Part 1

As a rule, I don't wait to get inside an estate sale. There are just too many you can waltz right into to waste time treating one like it's the hottest nightspot in town.

But. On this particular Saturday I'd already driven all the way to Waukegan. And instead of the usual five to ten shoppers, there was a line. One stretching all the way from the sidewalk, through what had recently been an ancient and overgrown yard, and up to the front door of a mansion bigger than anything I've seen in months.

So I waited. For about an hour. And as I did I overheard more and more about the woman who'd lived there. She was one of those people who everybody knows, but no one knows much about. The family had been well-off, and large. Eight children grew up here. And after the father died, his widow had spent what was left of her time and money traveling the world, bringing as much of it as she could back to her empty home.

The further up the line I got, the more people lined up behind me. Neighbors and friends waved and called out to one another, remarking on how many of them had come just to get a look inside the house they'd only ever seen from the street. Every so often someone would carry something out of the front door, and people would stop their conversations to ooh and aah, like fireworks were going off.

On more than one occasion I heard the sale referred to -- only half-jokingly -- as "the social event of the season."

Eventually, it became my turn to go inside. And at first, I wasn't a bit impressed. Not until I got to the kitchen and grasped the sheer size of the place, and the volume of stuff in it.

There was so much, and it was all so odd, so particular, and it was everywhere I looked.

Clues and curiosities, just waiting to be pieced back together.

It had been a beautiful home at one time, with the kind of luxuries most of us only see in magazines.

There was a greenhouse, gone wild.

A pool, drained and left dry for who knows how long.

Three floors and a basement. All of them filled beyond full.

More on Monday.