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Wales Online
Wales Online
Lifestyle
Joanne Ridout

Detached home renovation project that comes with probably the best understairs feature ever

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 out 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 the house in the area.

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The driveway at the side leads to a big bonus at this house (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

The period family home sits on a residential street in Hawthorn, a village in the county of Rhondda Cynon Taf, and just south of Pontypridd. According to property portal Rightmove, the village has an average house price of £175,242 which includes terraced houses and flats.

Detached properties in the village and area have recorded an average of £267,500 over the last year, so this home's asking price of £450,000 surely has to be based on the potential to develop the plot of land at the rear of the property?

But don't be distracted by your imagination running 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 very unique and include one awesome, 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 and the plate rack that hugs the walls, 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.

Pretty window in the hall but it's not the main feature (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)
Make mine a G&T please - without question, the best use of an under stairs area in a normal family home (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

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.

However, with the understairs storage now the home for the wine bottles and collection of gins, a new home to store the coat will have to be found, but that's a small price to pay for a pretty awesome use of this sometimes underrated space.

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 in this generous room continues the surprise, with some retro classics that includes the more 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.

Two reception rooms knocked into one so everyone can marvel at the unusual 'mountain peak' fireplace (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

Maybe under the carpet a new owner will find some original parquet flooring, so popular within many of the homes built in the years between the world wars.

The house then offers an extra room between the hall and the kitchen diner that maybe could be a children's playroom or media room but with so many people working from home since the Covid-19 pandemic, be it full or part-time, then its opportunity to be a good sized home office is obvious.

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 sought-after English rose units or more common units, if they are originally from the 1950s then they are a great find.

If the kitchen is original 1950s then it's a fabulous find (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

The kitchen offers a breakfast bar as well as a utility space at the end. A new owner could relocate the utility area and create a dining area that, with the window transformed into a set of French doors, could lead directly out into the garden to add to the access provided by the single door from the kitchen to the outside space.

Upstairs, the benefit of this property being a larger than average detached house from the era is obvious with even the third bedroom, usually called the 'box room' in houses from this period, a decent size.

The bathroom is spacious too, offering a bonus bidet that is now becoming popular again. But there appears to be space to rearrange the suite somewhat to include a stand-alone shower, so the bidet might end up being a goner, sacrificed for space for a shower.

Three bedrooms in total (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)
Bathroom with so much retro features to see, including the rather revealing wallpaper you may want to strip off (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

But while you're musing about how you could fit a shower into this room you're probably also marvelling at the retro interior design that combines so many things to ogle over it's hard to know where to start.

The blue suite is visually wonderful on its own but when mixed with the black walls and pink floor, it's a head turner. And the walls are definitely enticing you to have a closer look at the intriguing and rather revealing wallpaper design that is surely one of a kind but you may want to strip off?

Out in the pretty rear garden with its neat lawn and tidy, mature shrubs and it's obvious that this house was well-loved and enjoyed as a home both inside and out - it welcomes you to make it your own as well as welcoming you home with a glass of something refreshing from the best home bar in the area.

Pretty and neat rear garden at this obviously well-loved and looked after home (Nexa, south Wales / rightmove)

The house with the bar under the stairs is for sale for £450,000 with Nexa South Wales, call the Pontypridd branch on 01443 400992 to find out more. And don't miss the best dream homes in Wales, auction properties, renovation stories, and interiors - join the Amazing Welsh Homes newsletter, sent to your inbox twice a week.

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