Renovation all going to plan

“IT’S a job for life,” says Ber Pey, surveying the tanking operation that’s been completed in the ground floor of 3 Newenham Terrace.

The interior designer is two months into a major renovation project of a four-storey, Georgian house in the middle of Cork city.

It’s a private, family project which she hopes to see concluded by September – ambitious maybe, but on the basis of the work done so far, all’s going to plan.

The tanking is an involved process that will keep damp at bay for years and is a rough, toughened plastic over a bitumous layer tied in with plastic pins that will hold the material while the wall on which it’s fixed is plastered over. And it covers all of the ground floor to wainscot height – because that’s as far as the capillary action of damp will go and it’s why people used wainscoting in the past – to hide wet patches and protect furniture and bedding.

Now the tough, transparent material covers the walls, window opes and reaches up around the main doorcase and other areas where there may be a water breach.

Snakes of new chimney lining coil run down onto empty hearths and on the upper level, the old daub and wattle base of dividing walls is open to see.

Here, the old bubbling brown paint is the last reminder of the frugal, uninspired level of interior decor of the last century. A time when houses like this were cheap (and subdivided) as families moved to the new suburbs to live.

But big old houses were hard to heat and one can conjure up images of a single glowing grate of a darkening evening, and the cold breath of freezing bedrooms untouched by a single bar electric fire. And yet, it’s starting to feel more and more like home to Ber Pey, who’s now on site most of the time, and who it seems, carries around the vision of the completed property in her head.

She walks and talks, pointing to the newly exposed, 10’ sash window in the kitchen, formerly covered by a sink unit:

“I just love that window – there was a sink originally here blocking the full effect, but now it’s going to be gorgeous.”

And this leads into the next element of the project: the removal and repair of the house’s sash windows.

“The panes are 2mm in width – very thin and priceless – I learned this from Pat Ruane, (city council conservation architect) who is very keen to keep these and not to use replacement glass.

“The wiring’s all done on the ground floor and there are new door frames with the original architraves covered over and protected, as is the staircase,” she says.

She’s concentrating on wall lights only for most of the rooms, with pendant lighting only in the kitchen and bathrooms.

In another couple of weeks, the re-plastering and re-cornicing will happen, but in a piecemeal fashion, as walls have only been stripped where necessary.

And because this house is listed, there won’t be retro fitting of bulky insulation – all the elements will be restored as was, the only exception being new, double glazed sashes windows in the attic rooms where heat conservation is paramount.

The stoutly-built, stone house is part of terrace, however, and has its depth and its neighbours for warmth. The proposed installation of a big, black Aga should create thrumming heat from the ground floor upwards, along with gas heating, of course.

And the kitchen will comprise of stand-alone pieces in Johnny Gray mode, (the designer and nephew of Elizabeth David), with a mix of contemporary and traditional styles.

There will be a full wall of units on one side, the stove in the firebreast, (a shave too low, so the arch will have to be re-done), and an island with a breakfast area, that will have a satellite table capable of being moved under the window for occasional meals.

Ber skips around the house highlighting the changes made and the plans to come: walls are sprayed with instructions, such as lights here, cooker there, fridge here: all the prep work that separates the women from the girls in the fine art that is property restoration.

In the space between a family wedding in Australia and her return, Ber Pey was relieved to find the builders had cleared a number of benchmarks before heading off on their own Easter holidays.

The roof has been re-done with the bulk of the original slates used on the front of the house and on the re-cut dormers for continuity.

The old and salvaged slate has been used at the rear to make up the loss of broken or perished materials.

And best of all, there’s all that lime re-pointing, which, to use the vernacular, she’s only weak for. It’s at the back, it won’t be seen and hers is the only house with this finish and it probably cost a bomb, but then, that’s what the building needed and that’s what it got.

So the smart rear elevation looks down on a chaotic, builder’s yard of a garden, the last and final step in the odyssey that is Ms Pey’s re-creation of No 3 Newenham Terrace.

And she has the banners up to prove it.