Homeowner's years of quirky decorating has left £250,000 cottage 'unsellable'
It's not every day you see a cottage that could easily be mistaken for a life-sized doll house - but that's exactly what one homeowner has done.
Mary Rose Young bought her cottage-turned-workspace and gallery back in 1987 for just £30,000. Since then she has, by hand, intricately decorated the property into a piece of art itself, leaving but an inch of white paint left over. But, her bold taste and artistic freedom have come at a price.
In 2014, Mary and her husband Phil Butcher decided to put the house, located in Lydney, Gloucestershire, for sale to open up a boutique hotel - with estate agents saying the property was worth at least £250,000. However, it appears prospective buyers can't see pass the house's colourful interior.
Mary Rose wanted her home to 'make you feel like a child walking into a sweet shop' (Mercury Press & Media)Despite the decor leaving Mary Rose and her husband Phil Butcher stuck in the home, the potter has refused to paint over her life's work and says she still loves the house. It appears she still lives and works there too, posting a picture of the cottage on Instagram back in October of last year.
In 2021, she said: "I made this house around my own life and I wasn't thinking about it being sellable. We're living like two children in a doll's house and in retrospect why would anybody else want to buy it? It's like a playhouse for adults.
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She painted it all by hand over 30 years (Mercury Press & Media)"I just thought it might go to a mad collector of my work who might want to buy it, but no one was interested. Only one person came and looked at it in the year it was on the market and they weren't here long."
Mary added: "I think they had just come out of curiosity to see the decoration and were never interested. The estate agents despaired. I could have painted over all my work, but I didn't want to. I love my house and the house really works for me. I'm a colourful person and I even have pink hair. I like it more and more as I get older."
Mary Rose shares the home with her husband Phil (Mercury Press & Media)Want to avoid the doom and gloom? Get the latest positive news sent straight to your inbox with our Bright Stuff newsletter
Since the failure to sell left her dreams of running her own hotel in tatters, Mary has doubled down and put even more effort into putting her mark on the property, turning the courtyard into a bright pink painting. When she originally bought the house, which is comprised of two knocked-through cottages, she painted the entire home white in a bid to bring more light in, but when that failed she began drawing patterns inspired by her colourful pottery on the walls.
She said after doing one wall orange with red dots it helped distract from the fact there's 'hardly any natural light' and it went from there. She added: "It became a really fun project for me on the side of my pottery business and I was so galvanised by it I ended up neglecting my pottery at times."
Mary Rose has incorporated her pottery work into the designs (Mercury Press & Media)Mary has also incorporated her pottery pieces into the home's features, with a pottery chandelier in the sitting room and handmade pottery tiles in the bathroom. She said: "I've stopped noticing how colourful it is because I've lived here for so long.
"Lots of people are self-conscious and don't say much when they see the decoration, but the right reaction is to laugh and go 'oh wow.' It should make you feel like a child walking into a sweet shop. I want people to feel like adults can have lots of fun too."
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