Fingerpost is pointing to an exceptional bungalow

Tommy Barker admires the renovation job by Glenora’s architect-owner.

SMART, but not exceptional, might be the superficial verdict on Glenora, but, once inside, this opinion is swiftly revised.

This bungalow is impressive, beginning with a surprising 2,600 sq ft of accommodation, a thorough renovation with some smart ideas, and bright interiors.

Once the location, within 200 yards of the Fingerpost, in Douglas village, on Maryborough Hill, is mentioned the deal is a clincher, even when bidding is expected to start at €1.1m.

This house’s previous usage prompts the old Cork joke: “what’s a créche? A créche is a car accident off the Rochestown Road,” as it was previously a childcare centre and it is near to the Rochestown Road.

Maryborough House Hotel and spa, and Douglas Golf Club, are also close by, and Douglas village’s shopping centres are a five-minute walk. The location is cast-iron, with the small price of commuting traffic as a slight trade-off.

This detached, private bungalow dates to the 1960s, but, after a year-long renovation and upgrading, it is contemporary, though with a nod to traditional, quality materials.

It is probably not a surprise that the man behind the makeover is an architect, who bought Glenora three years ago and spent the last year or so working with a crew of committed tradesmen and women.

The finished job is on the market with estate agent Mark Kelly, of Lisney’s Cork office, who is marketing it as a family or executive home in one of the city’s strongest residential locations.

The house is in walk-in condition and is of a quality to satisfy a wide range of buyers.

It is on a private, walled site of a quarter of an acre — landscaped by Frances Collins — and revealed only when the electric entrance gate slides sideways. Inside is a graveled parking area, with granite sets and hefty rail sleepers creating a curved path to the wide entrance door.

Trees front and back are mature, and exterior joinery and glazing is teak/hardwood, including soffit and fascias.

While the front of the house is discretely modest, with its matching wood blinds, the back of the house is more elaborate, in a sheltering L-shape with living and sleeping quarters on separate sites, and French doors opening onto the terrace and the lawns from the main rooms, including from two of the bedrooms.

The back has no less than six sets of French doors, and the house has nine openings/doorways, probably influenced by the time the architect-owner spent in Australia, the land of the great outdoors.

The number of doors is ideal for parties and there’s a slickness to the interior of the house.

A maritime/marine theme meets Ralph Lauren look has been adopted in the ornamentation and design.

The house has four bedrooms, two with en-suite bathrooms with power showers, and the main family bathroom has a raised bath with solid-wood surround: quality tiling from Richardsons’ adds to the luxurious, but understated feel in the wet rooms.

Thought, too, has been given to the built-ins, with a large, Edwardian wardrobe look to one room, sourced from Sienna, in Co Waterford, while the master bedroom has mirrored Sliderobes, and an annexe that would be suitable as a study, with pitched and wood-clad painted ceiling: the vendor has a swish rowing machine for the Lauren locker-room look, but it is likely to leave with him.

While the bedrooms are of a high standard, the best rooms are in the other wing of this airy home: these include a dining area to the front, which opens into an individual, cleverly-styled kitchen.

Here, simple white-gloss units are cased on top, and along the sides, in 3’ teak wrap-around frames: the effect is of an immensely strong heft and quality, with oiled teak work tops, and Miele appliances, offset with white, rectangular, metro tiles. Punching through the kitchen ceiling are four, double-glazed roof domes, for natural daylight into the area’s flat roof, confidently placed by the architect-owner.

When a job is done right, as this is, with quality new materials, then leaking flat roofs will not be a problem.

The same gloss-and-teak quality carries over to a large utility, with guest loo alongside, and at the very rear of the house is the ‘piece de resistance’, the party-sized reception room, complete with eye-catching, warm, gas-insert fire, with wide, horizontal-white marble hearth making an architectural statement and providing a seating bank, too.

There’s a second, smaller reception room, with electric wall fire, but this can be converted to gas, and the room, like most of the rest of the reception and circulation areas, has solid, hardwood flooring, by joiner Martin Burke, who also created the kitchen unit surrounds.

Internal doors are either painted panels with quality ironmongery, or cherrywood, including some neat, sliding, glazed (and part sandblasted) doors by Peter Healy of SouthWoods, while Munster Joinery did the external doors and window frames.

Team, take a bow.

Lisneys, man the sale boards and phones.