A determined mom has transformed a hoarder’s hovel into a stunning family home.
Ciara Sowers, 32, spent four YEARS clearing out rotten food, jars of urine, and bags of human hair from the house to make an incredible home for herself and her daughters Macy, 6, and Marleigh, 3.
Ciara had bought the house from her grandmother—which had been rented for years to a tenant—but she was left shocked when she first got the keys to the property.
Pictures show what she arrived to find—enough rubbish to fill 100 industrial-sized garbage bags. The property had previously been rented by an individual who it emerged had hoarded extensively, leaving behind heaps of filth and human waste.
“When I first opened the bathroom door, I thought we had made a huge mistake,“ Ciara said. ”There were human feces smeared on the door and in the tub was stagnant water with a milk crate that he would sit on to wash.”
She added, “In the home we also found, jars full of urine, bags of human hair, used condoms, newspapers, magazines, rotten food, and trash. The trash came up to my hip and we had to climb over dishes and couches to get into the room.”
However, Ciara persevered for years and was able to transform the property, in Alberta, Canada, into a cozy home for herself and her two daughters.
Along with clearing the inside of the house, a second building on the property has been converted into a chicken coop, while a barn which was left in poor condition was torn down.
The biggest challenge for Ciara was the main entrance to the home, after it was discovered the foundation was crumbling and required ripping out all the old drywall and changing the flooring. All in all, the work to complete this alone took six months.
While it would take around three months to make the house livable, the end result of four years’ hard work is that Ciara is now happy when she arrives back at home.
“The secret was determination, I’m a hard worker and find that I cannot relax until I get a job done,” she adds. “The after pictures are what it looks like now and I feel the home is up to my standards, I feel confident in sharing where I started.”
