What to Know
If you’ve never watched 19 Kids and Counting, you might not be too familiar with the layout of the Duggar house. However, one user on TikTok, Maia, breaks it down in a video, followed by other videos with other details, to share just how creepy the layout actually is. The house was built after the family got their first TLC special and Jim Bob Duggar enlisted the help of all of his and Michelle Duggar’s able-bodied kids to build what is referred to on Reddit as the “tin house.”
That’s because the house has a steel frame. It’s also 7,000 square feet and, eventually, TLC reportedly helped pay for its completion. But the Duggars could have had any design, any layout, and any number of bedrooms. Instead, the layout seems to have been designed for a specific and very dark reason that longtime viewers of the now-canceled show might know about.
The layout of the Duggar house may be familiar to fans of ’19 Kids and Counting.’
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Maia explains in her video that the layout of the Duggar home, which consists of two floors and a pretty open floor plan on the first floor, is different from what you might expect. She also says that the three bedrooms on the second floor are positioned in a way that forces the kids to have to walk by the master bedroom to get to the other side of the floor.
“The duggers had 19 children but built only two bedrooms, one for the girls and one for the boys to sleep in,” Maia says, not accounting for Jim Bob and Michelle’s room, of course, as she points to the illustrated layout. “The first floor isn’t particularly interesting, but you can see over here in the bottom right corner is the boys room. If you walk to the left there is a catwalk which leads past the parents room and the only way to get to the girls room is to go past the parents room. This is where all the girls sleep.”
In her second video about the layout of the house, Maia addresses a question from someone about whether or not the bedroom placement really was intentional when the Duggars built their home in Tontitown, Ark. According to Maia, it was definitely on purpose, potentially due in part to the molestation scandal that the family admitted to from when Josh Duggar was a teenager and his sisters were also children.
“Josh started committing the crimes that he did when they were living in their really small rental house before the show started,” Maia says. She explains that when they built the large house that the family still lives in today, it was after the molestation is reported to have occurred.
The house only has three bedrooms for 21 people.
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Other people have noticed what Maia calls the “bone chilling” layout of the Duggar home. When she posted her first video on TikTok about the home’s layout, other people familiar with the house and with the Duggars commented to share their thoughts.
“I used to love the Duggars,” one person commented. “But when they built that house I always questioned why they would only build two rooms for the kids.”
Another pointed out that the family designed the home with an “office and a sewing room instead of more bedrooms.”
“The two bedrooms concern me less than the reason for it,” a commenter added. “I have never worried that my kids were sneaking to each other’s bedrooms in the middle of the night.”
Although Jim Bob and Michelle did not say on 19 Kids and Counting that the two bedrooms and their placement was to prevent brothers and sisters from sneaking into each other’s rooms, that’s the growing belief among those who have followed the Duggar family for years.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar allegedly locked the bedrooms at night.
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Maia also says in her video that there are locks on the outside of each bedroom for when the kids go to sleep at night. If this is accurate, then it might be another alleged measure to keep the kids from going into other bedrooms in the middle of the night. In her third video about the Duggar house, Maia shares the reason for a media room connected to the boys’ room, which is another creepy area of the house in hindsight.
“If you look down here, the boys room has a special room called the studio,” she explains. “This room was basically a private computer room/recording studio. This room was made especially with Josh in mind. You see, Josh had a fascination with computers, and Michelle and Jim Bob really seemed to foster it.”
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