- Heather Blumberg and her family turned a funeral home into their mansion.
- There are 38 rooms and the family uses every single one.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Heather Blumberg, who turned a funeral home into her house. It has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2021, my family and I moved into a funeral home, which we have since converted into our house. We paid $570,000 to buy it and have since put $400,000 into it.
The home had a sympathetic extension added in the 1990's, increasing the house footprint by 6,000 square feet and giving it a total footprint of 14,000 square feet.
When we first saw a picture of the mansion in a news article online, we were in the middle of the pandemic. We loved it, walked through it, and knew we had to buy it.
The house is nearly 150 years old, and it has an amazing history. We wanted to see it preserved and not turned into a condo, or worse — have something built over it. We felt that the house was meant for us and that it needed us.
We now live here and have 38 rooms. We use all of them, even the ones we are still renovating. We're a family of four with Great Danes — they take up a lot of space.
Our home has a cigar lounge, two libraries, 10 bedrooms and three parlors. Every space in the house is designed to be a fairly dramatic experience.
But with that said, some of our neighbors have said goodbye to their family members in this very building and have a lot of emotional ties to this space. So we try hard to be sympathetic and respectful when designing our home — although we're modernizing a lot of things, we're keeping the infrastructure and the foundation of the house the same.
Here are a few of the fun features in our home.
1. The enchanted forest
I knew I needed to create a transition between the foyer, the parlor and the staircase. To create this space, I felt inspired by the one scene that had a forest with butterflies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." As I watched it, it made me feel happy, and I knew I wanted to recreate it.
I brought in a friend to do the mural on the staircase walls. I also added in taxidermy owls that my husband collected growing up.
The forest is made from real trees and I applied fake leaves and blossoms. Still, it looked too naked to me — so I added in 2,000 butterflies.
2. The casket bar
We also converted a casket lift, which used to be a way to move bodies and caskets around the house into a casket bar. It's electrical and it goes to four different floors. Our casket has bottles and glasses in it.
3. The body box
We also have a body box that we found in our basement when we first moved in. When people died overseas, their bodies would be put into these boxes to be returned home. The bodies were put on ice and sent to to whatever funeral home they needed to go to.
When we found it, we didn't want to throw it away beacuse it felt disrespectful. So we contacted the son of the person and asked him if we could keep it. He let us, and we framed it.
4. The dining room
Our dining room used to be a chapel, so it's really a huge space. Everything is black, and when people walk through it they always have a moment where they take it all in.
We probably use the kitchen and family room the most. We're a disgustingly close-knit family, and we like to hang out together, eat together and do game nights more often than we probably should. We all love cooking as well.
This house also has supernatural activity in it
Sometimes you see people walking around, and you hear footsteps or doors opening. More specifically we have a woman that just shouts "Hello!" randomly. The first time it happened, I was scared. I sat in a room for about three hours afterwards, not daring to leave.
But now it's normal and happens all the time. There's nothing scary about it; we don't have demons trying to take our souls, or anything like that.
Looking ahead, I can't wait to work on other parts of the home like the main library. Eventually, we want to keep the house and turn it into a B&B. I also want to go off and work on an asylum or a hospital next.
If you have a fun, unique home and would like to share your story, email Alyshia Hull at ahull@insider.com.