I spent 40 years transforming ‘boring’ cottage after buying it for just £30,000 – but now it’s unsellable

FOR the past 40 years an artist has been working to transform her "boring" cottage into a real-life play house.

Mary Rose Young snapped her home up for just £30,000 in 1987, and has been painting it with all sorts of bright colours and patterns ever since.

But it's those extreme renovations that have left the Gloucestershire home unsellable - despite real estate agents once saying she and husband Phil Butcher would easily get £500,000.

Keen to make it their own, each year the couple would pick up brushes and paint the Lydney home with different colours - with polka-dotted stairs and chequered floors.

Each room is styled completely different, with unique designs carefully planned throughout the house.

Their toilet boasts a zebra seat, while the cistern and porcelain have colourful flowers - which also cover the bathroom's walls.

Some rooms have walls, floors and shelves decorated with multiple different colours and designs, including table plates and chandeliers.

Mary Rose has even dubbed her home a "funhouse for adults", and says she'll never return it to how it was before.

She previously said: “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.

“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?

“I just thought it might go to a mad collector of my work who might want to buy it, but no one was interested."

Mary Rose says she's lived in the bright-coloured home for so long that she doesn't see it as quirky.

She continued: “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.”

She made the call to try to sell the home in 2014 - but is said to have had no such luck to date.

Real estate agents told her the home should be worth at least £500,000, but its eccentric style meant it has failed to drum up any serious interest.

Only one curious person was persuaded to view the house and they chose not to buy.

After sharing her news Mary Rose’s inbox was flooded with requests from people across the globe wanting to tour her unusual home with some asking to use it as a backdrop in their music videos.

Alongside running her pottery business, Mary Rose decided to let her home out on AirBnB so that others can enjoy it too.

She told the  in 2022: "Families have been staying there over the summer and the kids have loved it.

"Painting rooms in my bright colours inspires me – it's something I can stand back and look at and keep rather than selling to my customers."