Tolca an inviting home

Beautifully tidy and freshly painted, this above-average detached property won’t be on the market for long, writes Tommy Barker.

YOU’D often know, from a house’s vintage, what to expect crossing the threshold: in the case of Tolca, in Cork’s Woolhara Park off the Douglas Road, you’d only be half informed.

The rooms are as you’d expect of the era — only spotless. Every inch inside is freshly painted, pure white, gloss and emulsion, and every floor is freshly re-carpeted, in shades of pale blue wool.

Original features are all here, so there’s lots of interesting woodwork and window boards and architraves, also glistening clean, almost like new.

Yet, while money clearly was spent on getting the place genuinely pristine, it wasn’t foolishly done as ‘staging’ for a sale — for example, the kitchen is original, basic, utterly unfancy... but equally spotless. Tolca appears just done to this level out of dogged house-pride. Even the front door’s lock is Brasso-ed smooth, the maker’s name is all but rubbed out.

Calling the next proud owners, so, and their brass offerings.

This double-fronted four-bed detached Woolhara home is new to market with Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co auctioneers, guiding €625,000, and he has it already under early offer, under the €600k mark as yet, but viewings are gathering pace.

There haven’t been many, or any, recent Woolharad detached house sales: the strongest market peak saw a few semi-ds topping €600,000, and last year a very decent semi here made around €550,000.

Detached Tolca will draw the curious, and those who’ve sat and waited to now swoop on an above-average Douglas detached in this favoured cul de sac park at a reasonable price level.

Tolca faces west, with a good front garden, off-street parking and attached garage, with side access on the other side to the back garden where there’s an enclose rear yard directly behind the kitchen.

That painted yard wall blocks some of the best garden views, and that garden is a real selling point, a large rectangle, bounded by high walls, and the back boundary is to the wooded public park by Douglas swimming pool.

The mid-1900s family home has three reception rooms at ground level, two with the simplest bands of brass around the opes, and the two front rooms have bay windows, repeated overhead in the two main bedrooms.

Most of the bedrooms have banks of built-ins, not modern, but not the sort of thing you’d immediately change, bar maybe updating doors. The bathroom is fresh and modern recently re-tiled, and there’s a separate first floor WC to help cut down early morning queues.

There’s no en suite bedroom — the closest thing is a hand basin in a back bedroom.

Heating is oil-fired, and windows are recently fitted, white pvc in a style that suits the look and period.

VERDICT: Despite an east-facing back garden, it won’t be on the market long.