I'd kill for a house like that...Or is it die for?

I live in an old building - 160 years old, of thereabouts. I'm pretty sure that at least a few folks have died in this building, but I can't be positive. During the nearly 30 years I've lived here, there have been two deaths - my husband and our ancient neighbor Jack. My husband died in hospice. Jack died, at the age of 99, in the nursing home he'd entered the week before. So, neither died on site.

The house where I spent my childhood from age 6 1/2 on was new, and no one died there, either, while the Rogers family was in possession. My father died when we lived there, but he was in a hospital, back in the day when they kept you in the hospital. My father spent the last 2 months of his life in a hospital bed with nothing much being done for him. I'm sure he would have been far happier at home, but that just wasn't the thing back then. (Early 1970's.)

Prior to moving into our own house - the house my father didn't die in -  we lived in my grandmother's 3-family. I know of at least two deaths that took place there: my grandfather and my Uncle Charlie. I wouldn't be surprised if there'd been a few more over time. 

I've lived in a number of places over the years, and they've almost all been in old buildings. So I'm guessing that these buildings saw more than a few deaths. I lived for a couple of years in converted carriage house - in the hayloft - so there many have been a couple of equine deaths recorded at some point.

But as far as I know, I haven't lived any place where a murder took place.

Which means, I guess, that I'm not eligible for a new home makeover show, Murder House Flip. The show is available on Quibi, a new mobile "short burst" entertainment site that I won't be subscribing to. I'm already overwhelmed by the amount of content available on Prime, Netflix, and HBO. Adding more is the last thing I want to do. And I'm really not interested in short bursts of entertainment. When I hunker down for a show - as I did the other night with Season 6 of Bosch - I want to get an hour's worth or so of entertainment out of it. With the option of gliding right into the next episode in 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds. Guess I'm just one of those helpless old-schoolers with long attention spans. 

Not that I'm not a bit intrigued by the concept of Murder House Flip, a mashup of HGTC makeover shows and true crime. Which is pretty funny when you think about it.

I guess it's no surprise that the producer of CSI, Josh Berman, is involved. 

Murder House Flip will have a couple of designers involved, and:

...will also include a "colorful cast of forensic specialists, spiritual healers and high-end renovation experts. (They’ll) uncover the crimes, shocking secrets and scandalous history of the homes." While the premise of Murder House Flip is extremely different than most other shows in the home reno genre, the goal remains the same—to create a better, brighter space for the family living there. (Source: House Beautiful)

I can just imagine it. Tarek and Christina from Flip or Flop. The Property Brothers - Jonathan, Drew, and the other brother that sometimes comes along for the ride. A couple of ex-cops for the forensics. And Theresa Caputo of Long Island Medium fame, spiritually healing the place by seance-ing with the deceased and then waving around a smoking bundle of sage to purify things. 

When you watch the reno shows, there's always an unanticipated "surprise" that adds to the budget: a bearing wall no one knew was a bearing wall. (Duh!) Mold behind the shower stall. (Did no one have a nose?) A basement that gets water logged when it rains. Knob and tube electric or spaghetti wiring from a bad, earlier reno. Asbestos. There are any number of bad things that can happen once you take a sledgehammer to that first wall...

On Murder House Flip, the "surprise" might be a body. ("We had to call in the police and the coroner's office, and they had to yellow-tape the site off for a couple of weeks. That put a dent in the schedule, but we used the time to go tile shopping...")

The first show sounds like a lulu: the glamming up of a home where seven people were killed by a serial killer.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that what you do with the home where seven people were murdered is tear it down. And maybe just grass the plot in. But that doesn't make for a good story, so...

Star Price is the show's showrunner and executive producer. Here's some of what he has to say. (And yes, Star Price is a he. At first I was thinking that it was Star Jones, a she. But I googled and it's a boy!)

“My feeling through the whole process was that we had to be self aware of what we were doing. We couldn’t take it too earnestly and at the same time we couldn’t be disrespectful ... and at times we could have fun.” (Source: LA Times)

And talk about fun! That first house, the one with the seven murders? The serial killer was actually a landlady who killed her tenants but kept them alive as far as the government was concerned so that she could collect their Social Security checks.

“It’s actually sad to say it isn’t hard to find homes where murders took place,” Price says. The challenge was finding homes where notable crimes took place — “that were interesting at some level, as tragic as they were” — and willing homeowners who were looking, and in some cases desperate, for some sort of reboot to their house.

The show does partial makeovers, based on what the homeowners think needs some work. In one of the shows, a couple decides that they want to replace the bathtub where a man dismembered his wife. I think I might have done that rip and replace before moving in. But, as a consumer of HGTV, I'm well aware that the deal breakers tend to be lack of his and her sinks ("dual vanities"), dated non-stainless appliances, and stingy closets ("we can knock out the wall" - as long as it's not loadbearing - "and take this small bedroom you really don't need and turn it into a walk in closet you'd died for"). No one worries about whether someone got dismembered in their bathtub, although sometimes they do notice that there's a bit of staining on the porcelain... 

Anyway, I suppose that once the couple gets the new bathtub installed, they'll get asked a famous home makeover show question: "So, are you doing to love it, or list it???"

Personally, my answer would probably be list it. One thing to live in a place where someone has died. Another thing when we're talking murder, she wrote. That's a bit too eerie. (And, no, I'm not going to google 'killing' at this address. I did, however, look up where the Boston Strangler murders took place. Thankfully, none here!)

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A tip of the Pink Slip cap to my brother-in-law Rick for sending this idea my way. Hmmm. They live in a house that's well over 100 years old, too. Wonder if anything untoward ever happened there...