A brighter perspective on life at Sun View Villas

BUILT over 100 years ago as accommodation for doctors in a nearby hospital, 2 Sun View Villas is still in good health and showing few signs of its age.

The mid-terraced house, on the South Douglas Rod in Cork city, has a full-on, stripped down modern interior that belies its Centenarian status.

Think contemporary apartment design, slipped between the walls of a house that gives nothing away from the outside and you get an idea of the surprises in store and that's why the sales brochure with Global Properties kicks off with the legend 'don't judge a book by its cover."

The vendor bought this place about four years ago, and while he didn't have to invest heavily in extension or structural work, he took it by the scruff of its collar and gave it a good shaking.

It's a classic bachelor pad (the owner's car is a covetable Audi TT convertible anyone sense a lifestyle thing here?), and with a price guide of €310,000 will be competing head-on with some of the more up-market apartment schemes launched on the Cork market in the last year (in fact, there' scarcely an 'affordable' apartment development on the go at the moment.)

Viewers in the run-up to Christmas have included singles, professional couples, and even older couples and individuals thinking of trading down to an easily managed property, according to Donnchadh Crowley of Global, whose expectation is that it will be bought by a couple in the heel of the hunt.

It manages to fit in three overhead bedrooms, all compact in size, they're carpeted and have spotlighting.

There's two ground floor reception rooms, and a proper two-storey, pitched roof, annexed to the back provides the space for a kitchen at ground level and an overhead bathroom off the stairs return.

The bathroom is the spot where 'must-have' designer items take pride of place, most notably a large saucer-shaped frosted glass hand basin with single chrome mixer tap and there's a better than standard tiled shower installation as well, while the loo has a slim-line cistern.

Lighting pretty much throughout the house is recessed spot-lighting, while in the rear dining room there's a contemporary central fitting with counter-balancing weights for positioning it at various heights over the table.

Throughout the house, walls are plain white, the hall and living room have retained plain coving, and the front living room has an open fireplace, painted green, with unique mantle, displaying glass baubles and stones under a lid of toughened glass, supported on stainless steel rods.

The floor in this room is a laminate, in a rich mahogany shade, while behind the dining room has a mapre floor and the fieplace here in this second reception room has a gas insert and. again, a glass mantle top.

The new kitchen fitted behind (and watch your head going through if you are tall, the stairs cuts in at ceiling level to reduce clearance height to about 6') is a straightforward affair, with Shaker-style maple units and stainless steel handles.

A side door here leads to a walled in back garden, facing directly south (hence the terrace's name, Sun View) deliberately kept low maintenance with a wooden deck directly behind the house, giving way to a gravelled portion and, peeping over the back wall, low-rise pre-fab buildings part of Christ the King girl's secondary school.

The house is set just back off the South Douglas Road close to the back of St Finbarr's Hospital, with a railed in gravelled front garden there's no dedicated parking, but there is an open section nearby where cars are parked by residents. Distance to the city centre is a little over a mile.

No 2 comes with gas heating, and has painted single glazed hardwood windows in good condition.