A small terrace of houses on a hillside in Georgetown above Tredegar was the destination for Homes Under The Hammer's presenter Martin Roberts to have a good rummage around a two-bed in the centre of the block that was going to auction.
The house tour started well with space on the ground floor including the chance to ditch the utility room and create a larger bathroom, and a large kitchen not always found inside a traditional valleys terrace.
Martin is getting excited - looks like there's nothing too structural to do here other than proposed layout changes. Or the house could just stay as is and go straight to the cosmetic, interior design stage - happy days.
The house was going under the hammer with a guide price of £30,000 and Martin is impressed that for that price, it isn't falling apart, maybe some parts are dated but it doesn't smell of damp and where are the structural challenges?
After finding the hidden staircase at the back of the house, Martin explores the two spacious bedrooms and falls over himself with the amount of potential up here to either add an ensuite to each or create a third bedroom.
But it is on this first floor that he feels like he has egg on his face when he finds both bedrooms are riddled with penetrating damp on the walls, so his 'no damp here' stance from downstairs is made redundant and a new owner will have to track down the source or multiple sources of the problem. So much for no structural work.
Out in the garden and there is a puzzle out here too - the garden seems to keep going up the hill into a very large parcel of scrubland that doesn't seem to be owned by anyone and the only feature is this home's washing line; curious indeed.
The house went to auction and was bought by for £55,000 by Matt, who has been on the show before, buying a retail and flats unit in Ebbw Vale via the auction and then selling them on with planning permission to make a profit without even getting his toolbelt on - clever. But was this auction property going to be a different story?
Optimistic Matt is well up for turning this valleys terrace into a super smart home to attract a higher calibre of tenant in just 12 weeks and with a slim budget of £10k - £15k. And as for the field at the back that looks like it could be part of the garden? He has no idea.
And Martin is not overly impressed at this and that surely raises the question can Matt deliver on a renovation project that meets his ambitious vision as well as his tight budget and timescale? No.
Not 12 weeks but 68 weeks later the cameras return. From initially not looking like it needed much doing to it, the house ended up having pretty much everything doing to it.
The dated kitchen is gone and has been replaced with a sleek, contemporary new one, and the wall between the utility room and old, grubby bathroom has gone, as Martin suggested, and the new space has been given a luxury refurbishment.
And Martin's view? 'It's amazing! It's looking fab and much better than before!' he exclaims.
Upstairs, Matt has reconfigured the spaces to create three bedrooms to replace the two. And what of the weird garden that might not have been a garden?
It wasn't on the paperwork that came with the house so a lot of time has been spent trying to sort that out. For privacy and security, for now at least, Matt has put up a fence along the boundary while a plan is put in place to get the field area into his possession.
So it hasn't been easy - the timescale was way off, the garden was a challenge that's still not sorted, and the house needed a top to bottom refit.
But Matt was right when he said that this house was going to be transformed, it does looks super special - not many house transformations have Martin gushing so much. But it came at a cost - Matt has spent almost as much doing it up as he did buying it - £55k to buy, up to £45k to transform it.
New windows and doors, new plumbing and heating, new wiring - it's easier and quicker to list what hasn't been done. Matt says: "I thought the wiring was OK and of course when we stripped it back, it needed a full rewire so that's an added expense.
"The damp was a nightmare as well, to get rid of - that's taken us months to sort out with hacking walls off, replastering and re-rendering. I'm always a little bit ambitious on my targets and goals, It's been nowhere near the timescale, but we got here in the end!"
And as for the massive overspend, the combination of a high end finish, more to do than first thought and the unexpected rise in the cost of materials and trades is mainly to blame, but Matt is not too bothered at the situation, saying 'never mind' because he is very pleased with the finished product.
And Martin is still a big fan of the house transformation that has realised Matt's high end vision for the house. The presenter says: "It's been well worth the wait as everything looks fantastic! It's clear the work has been done to a high standard."
And it's good news for Matt from the estate agent too, who values the house now at between £110,000 and £120,000k which sees a profit before tax of anywhere between £10k and £25k, as the final figure of how much has been lavished on this house remains unclear and not confirmed, but is well over the initial budget forecasted.
But it's going to become a rental house and not put on the market, so £700 per calendar month (pcm) for a house of this standard is recommended by the agent.
Matt is over-joyed - he was thinking of around £550 pcm and this means this house has rewarded his effort and over-budget spend with a yield of over 8% - happy days for the future of this Homes Under The Hammer house.
This house appeared in series 25, episode 56 of BBC's Homes Under The Hammer, currently available to view on BBC iPlayer. 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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