For me, it was not so much the house idea that I had problems visualising, it was how life actually worked. I found this story had too much "tell" and not enough "show". There was a lot of generalisations about how relationships worked, what the people were like, but very few actual examples of stuff happening. In the moments when something real happened, it was pretty evocative - eg the narrator's description of her mother preparing for the dinner party and the green glasses catching the light - I found that powerful and got a really strong sense of emotion and place- but I found that those moments just didn't come often enough.
Too much of the story was like the passage describing relationships on the lower storey, which talks about how the women think they have found something different, but then glance themselves in the mirror and realise they are the abuser, etc- I find this manner of writing passive and uninvolving, and feel that it gives the impression of high-mindedness without having the depth to back up that affectation. I would rather hear a recollection of a real incident, or see something genuine being played out. In a similar way, apparently everyone has no legs, but it doesn't actually seem to affect them in any real way. Apart from having problems with stairs, everything goes on the same - from having dinner parties to playing the piano. Now I'm not saying that those with no legs can't live a fulfilling life, but I do think that a whole society where nobody has legs might encounter a little more difficulty than not being able to get downstairs easily. When I visualise these people, they have legs, because there is nothing to make me believe they don't, apart from the narrator's original assertion. I do understand it's a fantastic story, and I'm not demanding utter realism from a surrealistic piece but there is an intrinsic lack of truth and depth.