‘I always look for people’: Tia explores ‘scary’ time capsule basement

Tia Weston slowly pans her camera across the darkened basement. As two bedrooms come into view, she abruptly swings the camera to her left.

It’s been four weeks since Weston – known for her $US1 house renovation – bought the abandoned property in North Dakota, in the United States.

“It’s time to clean out my scary basement,” Weston said in a video to YouTube this week.

“Over the last four weeks, I’ve been cleaning the main floor. It’s 100 per cent cleared out and ready for demo. But everything that I do on the main floor, I want to do downstairs as well.”

Weston regularly documents the reality of attempting to bring rundown houses back to life.

To date, she has almost 600,000 people cheering her on.

When it comes to her projects, the plan has always been to clean, demo then renovate.

Though, until this week, she has not ventured down into the basement level.

“I’m not looking forward to this. It’s so dark and I don’t have any electric,” she said as she stepped down into the house’s lower level.

As she begins to explain the rooms in front of her, Weston stops.

She swings the camera in her hand – which had been focused on two bedrooms – to the left.

“The first two areas I’m going to focus on are… Let me look at everything again,” she said. 

“I always like to look for people and animals before I start talking to you all or else I just think there’s something over my shoulder the whole time.

“There is quite a weird energy down here. Alright, we’re good.”

The empty abode has remained a time capsule since 2005, with nature the only resident.

Weston shared that since purchasing the home she learned the basement was once flooded.

“It’s in awful shape. It’s going to cost a lot of money to fix or it’s going to take a lot of time. But I’ll worry about that when I get there,” she said.

She salvaged a few items to show the state of the rooms – play money, an old leather Polaroid camera bag, a doll, a vintage radio, a model ship and an old typewriter.

“It basically just all crumbles and there’s nothing that you can keep,” she said.

She also found a previously unopened model car set from the 1930s.

Weston also found a number of running shoes and award ribbons. She’s since learned the former owner was a talented track runner.

It’s not the only surprising find she’s made at the property. Earlier this month, she revealed a hidden front door sealed behind a closet wall.

Weston purchased the home for $US10,000 ($15,336). 

This is the second abandoned house she’s bought in the space of almost two years. 

Last year, she famously paid just $US1 ($1.50) for an abandoned house which she transformed into her dream home for around $US40,000 ($61,000).

Weston said the time capsule house purchase is part of a larger goal to help others in her town cope among a housing crisis.

Weston estimates she has another week of cleaning before she can begin the demo of the house.