Time warp Sneyd Green home with 'dizzying' carpets and a 'museum piece' shower

A couple made a healthy profit on a dated Stoke-on-Trent house after a 'museum piece' was found among a 'catalogue of 1960s and 1970s design features'. The three-bed Sneyd Green semi had been left with many fittings from the 1960s and some questionable 1970s furnishings.

It went up for auction on hit BBC show Homes under the Hammer with a guide price of £75,000. Host Martin Roberts said: "The property I'm here to see is in a really lovely residential street. It's a house that hasn't had too much done to it in a little while. It's like a catalogue of 1960s and 1970s features. It needs bringing up to date."

Martin wasn’t impressed with the downstairs bathroom, saying it needed moving upstairs. “But more importantly,” said Martin, “it’s the wrong decade, or even the wrong century.

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Pointing to a weird and wonderful 1960s shower unit, he said: "Look at this pipework. You’ve got this extraordinary, weird heating thing. This is a museum piece. I love it, but it’s got to go.”

The carpets upstairs were dizzying 70s patterns, but Roberts wasn’t put off. “The only blot on property renovation here could be damp and mould, but that could just be because the house may have been empty for some time and hasn’t had ventilation.

Martin headed outside, saying: “Unlike the house, the mature garden has improved with age. Overall, this is a lovely family house that just needs sorting out.”

The property was snapped up at auction by Stoke-on-Trent couple Carolyn and Geoff for £90,000. The pair hoped to complete the project, which included new kitchen, bathroom, and walls coming down on a budget of under £20,000 as retired fireman and former electrician Geoff was to complete most of the work himself.

Mum Carolyn was mostly staying out of renovations, having recently donated a kidney to son Luke, 23, who was diagnosed with kidney disease aged 20 and has since won bronze in golf at the Transplant Games. Roberts said the house was “choc-full of period features,” but he “couldn’t work out what period they were in.” He was particularly enamoured with the moulded stone-effect fireplace made of paper.

The show returned a year later. Martin described the results as “truly sensational”, saying Geoff had “really outdone himself” by creating an open-plan kitchen living space and borrowing space from the bedrooms to create a family bathroom. The home had been modernised and re-wired throughout, with a downstairs loo put in underneath the stairs.

The couple stuck to their £20,000 budget, with Geoff doing the lion’s share of the work. Unfortunately, Carolyn’s son ended up back on dialysis during the renovation, with her mum and Geoff’s dad also passing away during that period. Carolyn said the property had to “come second” for periods.

Returning in August 2020, estate agents estimated the property could be worth £145,000, giving the pair a profit of £30,000.

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