Your chance to turn ‘Briar’ into a Holme from home

RENEWAL comes in stages, and it also comes in bursts – take Bernadette Way as a microcosm example.

This short estate of semi-detached homes between Cork’s Boreenmanna Road and the Ballinlough Road has been particularly busy this year, what with the builders in and all.

Most recently, the City Council re-surfaced the road, so there’s a smooth tarred approach now, but in the past 12 months or so, a clutch of neighbouring houses have made very visible upgrades too (see example pic.)

One semi-d was re-insulated, externally, with thick warming panels clasped to its exterior before being re-rendered and painted yellow. Right next door to it, meanwhile, the owners who had only bought their new home a few years ago went a different route, adding insulation inside, dry-lining/slabbing internal walls and further upgrades.

Yet another house in the row was extended in the past few years – and then the very latest job in Bernadette Way went the whole hog – practically full demolition, bar saving the exterior facade of the existing house: our photo here shows the state of play back in March of this year. Now, that house has been fully re-built, extended side and back, and is almost ready for re-occupation.

Which is when Briarholme enters the equation – kango hammers at dawn, again?

A new market arrival with Casey and Kingston this three-bed semi of similar mid-1900s vintage, with essential work like underpinning and drain renewal already done, has oil heating, an alarm, and teak windows. There’s a garage, and it has a small front entry porch – but it still needs internal upgrading and modernisation.

The agents Casey and Kingston seek offers around €310,000 for the really well-located home, within a short walk or drive of the city centre (the link road is 250 yards away), and as recently as 2007 re-sales along this stretch in good condition tipped into the mid-€400,000s.

Briarholme has a west-facing back garden, clear scope for extension – and neighbours alongside and across the road all show different ways of proceeding, going up into the attic, out to the side, out the back – and more extreme measures too.