Hidden feature is the best, bar none
FROM the outside this detached 1930s home looks like a winner – a large, neat and tidy front garden greets you and then shows you a long driveway and a suggestion of space around the back too.
This house is unique for so many reasons but the most exciting one, from the outside at least, is what you discover if you wander down that driveway.
There’s a garage, which is a bonus, but the real extra feature to find here is the plot of land that you discover once you go past the garage – development plot maybe?
The size of the land will be disclosed when you chat to the estate agent, and it doesn’t come with planning permission, but it could explain the higher than average asking price for a house in the area.
The period family home sits on a residential street in Hawthorn, a village in the county of Rhondda Cynon Taf just south of Pontypridd.
According to property portal Rightmove, the village has an average house price of £175,242.
Detached properties in the village and area recorded an average of £267,500 in the past year, so this home’s asking price of £450,000 surely has to be based on the potential to develop the land at the rear.
But don’t let your imagination run wild on the potential to create more properties at this site before you’ve had a good look around the house – it will also make your mind spin, but for a different reason. The interiors are unique and include one surprising feature that might amaze you.
From the front door and into the hall and your eye might be drawn to the pretty sailing boat stained-glass window at the bottom of the stairs, but really your focus should be on the area under the stairs as it has been given a very important function by a past owner.
It has been converted into a usable space more than just a storage cupboard – is it a handy cloakroom, reading nook, home office or dog kennel? Nope, it’s a brilliant bar.
Yes, the wood panels that start at the end of the stairs keep going but carved out of them is a bar that includes a mirror ceiling and mirror mosaic wall tiles. So when you come home from a hard day at work, you don’t even have to take your coat off before immediately having a welcome glass in your hand.
With the imagination still whirring about how you could make friends and family jealous with surely the best and most surprising bar in the area, enter the living room and this is pretty special too. The two reception rooms have been knocked through to create one large, sociable space.
The interior design continues the surprise, with some retro classics that includes the unusual “mountain peak” style fireplace that surely grabs your attention first. But there’s plenty of features to find here, including another stained-glass octagonal window and a light-filled bay window.
The kitchen diner extends out into the garden via a single-storey extension and is a fascinating room with a range of patterns fighting to get your attention. The kitchen itself could be a version of 1950s English Rose units, seeing as the agent selling the home calls this space a “time capsule”.
Whether they are the more soughtafter English Rose units or more common units, if they are originally from the 1950s then they are a great find.
■ The house is for sale for £450,000 with Nexa South Wales. Call the Pontypridd branch on 01443 400 992 to find out more.