If you come to Wales for a visit, it's wise to bring at least one brolly, although a back-up might be a good idea too. Recently, in the south Wales valley town of Ebbw Vale, Homes Under the Hammer's Martin Roberts bravely battled the infamous Welsh weather to get to have a good rummage around a mid-terrace property that was going to auction with a guide price of just £48,000.
The rain lashed down, the wind howled, and Martin's poor umbrella gave up trying to keep the presenter dry, completely falling apart before he even got to the front door of the property.
The house that greeted Martin was a three bedroom former family home that he thought had some "weird layout features" that caught his eye, including a strange angular arch way where the wall between the kitchen and hall once stood, and the strangest of hatches between the front and rear reception room.
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There were also two front doors that really confused Martin - why would a normal terrace house have a duo of front doors?
The local estate agent solved Martin's puzzle by explaining that it was most likely that the second front door was where the coal was delivered to the house, so it was not carried through to the rear via the main rooms of the home but via this side corridor.
There were three bedrooms upstairs and this is where the remains of a former occupant's belongings gave a hint at what was waiting for the next owner in the attic.
Martin was worried that a potential buyer might be put off by seeing other people's stuff inside, including in the garden, and would they know that when the hammer fell this stuff would then belong to them?
Despite this worry, Martin described the house as a good-sized family house with lots of potential but there was one aspect of the property that he just couldn't dismiss; that the home was built as a non-standard construction and sometimes this could cause a problem trying to raise a mortgage.
But being an optimistic fella, he went on to say that although there are different types of non-standard construction buildings, so this might not be a deal breaker.
The estate agent who visited the property before the auction thought the property would be worth between £90,000 - £100,000 once done up to a good standard.
The house went to auction and, after a flurry of bids, was bought by brothers Simon and Tristan who were a legal worker and electrician by trade and had appeared on the show previously with their renovation of a house in nearby Cwm.
They were not phased by the non-standard construction of the house or the random junk inside, with Simon saying this is the type of property that they like to buy and that the state of the house was actually what appealed to him.
He wanted to buy the worst house on the best street.
The brothers were also aware that a house on the same road had recently been bought with a mortgage so they thought their new property purchase was mortgageable, even if it would narrow the choice of mortgages and mortgage lenders somewhat for the next buyer.
The plan was to gut the house, take it back to brick and do absolutely everything; replumb, rewire, maybe square up the walls, fill in the hatch, new kitchen and bathroom, smarten up both gardens as well as the exterior of the house and including the windows; phew.
And all on a budget of £15,000 with a £5,000 contingency and a timescale of three months. Oh, and they also had to get rid of all of the rubbish they had inherited with the house.
Obviously with Tristan being an electrician there was a cost saving there and the brothers stated they had a team of trusted builders and tradespeople to get cracking on the house and bring it up to standard.
When Martin first visited the house before the auction and renovation project began he suggested the house needed a blast of wind to help clear it out, and when the work was finally done after 11 months, the brothers had to agree.
The BBC show revisited the house after the brothers had worked their renovation magic and Martin was very impressed with the high standard of the transformation.
Odd angles and holes in the wall were gone, and all rooms were replastered and repainted.
The kitchen diner was upgraded to a highly contemporary standard that then flowed into a new utility room in the corridor that used to connect that second 'coal delivery' front door to the kitchen.
The tick list of a full renovation was completed from electrics to plumbing, plastering to gardening, a new driveway to full insulation, plus a fully replumbed new bathroom.
The brothers also tried spraying the walls rather than the traditional roller manual job and found it took days off their timescale, with just one day to mask up the house and one day to spray the whole house with two coats.
But the work did take 11 months, and to do all that needed to be done - and it was everything - to the standard the brothers wanted to achieve meant the budget went up and up to just under £32,000. So the total spend on the project grew to around £89,000.
But the biggest challenge was the most obvious problem. Simon says: "The attic was ram-packed full of people's household contents that had just been shoved up there - floor to ceiling - and the shed was the same.
"We didn't want the builder to come and empty the house as that was something we wanted to do ourselves but it took a number of weekends and was a long process."
The brothers spent £3,000 on skips to remove the rubbish, including spent building material, and £4,000 on the windows and doors which Simon says they replaced throughout, new radiators, new kitchen, new bathroom, new drive - the list goes on and on, with Simon admitting they definitely underestimated the size and scale of the project.
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Martin thought it was worth it though, saying the difference in the house from before to after was night to day, but did the estate agent who visited to value it in its new state actually agree?
Simon stated that there were currently very similar houses on the road on the market for about £110,000 and if the brothers did get this they would have made a profit, before tax and fees, of around £21,000.
But although the estate agent gushed about the standard of finish and all the work that had been done, including the open-plan layout and the contemporary kitchen and bathroom, the brothers were in for a shock when the agent thought the new value of the house was just £85,000
That would mean a loss of about £4,000 for the property pair.
But the brothers were as unphased by this valuation as they were about the state of the house when they bought it, sticking to their thoughts of £110k as a reasonable valuation and were also thinking of renting the house out, as the estimated yield was over 8%.
Martin's thought on that difference on valuation was that 'opinions can vary' but there is one slice of advice all would-be developers should take onboard from this property expert.
Martin says: "Never underestimate how expensive and time consuming clearing out a house can be!"
This episode can still be viewed on BBC iplayer, season 24, episode 25.
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