Tralong House restoration a labour of love

Skill and tenacity ensured triumph despite cost, Rose Martin reports.

THE history of Tralong House reflects the socio-economic history of this country — in two distinct periods. The two-storey farmhouse, which holds a commanding position overlooking Tralong Bay, probably started off as a humble, mud cabin before being aggrandised in the early 1700s. This is based on the semi-archaeological work done during its recent renovation by architect owners Conor Kinsella and Agnieszka Cebo.

Three hundred years later, and in another period of prosperity, the house has been revived. The Kinsella/Cebo children are the first to be born in Tralong House in nigh on a hundred years.

And the painstaking restoration of their home is down to the skill and tenacity of both parents who didn’t walk away when their renovation project turned into a money-pit nightmare.

Initial investigation revealed two metre thick walls in one corner of the house built entirely of clay and with no mortar whatsoever.

Those walls are still drying out, they say, and are part of the reason they used breathable, lime plaster on the interior and limestone harling on the exterior. It allows the house to breathe and to dry out, slowly.

Gentle, underfloor heating was also a considered choice as the sustained, regular heat helps to warm up the house, which, because of its thickness, (40% of the total area) has its own thermal mass.

And because of the dampness internal insulation was foregone in favour of upping the insulation levels in the roof and in both new extensions.

Ardent surfers, Agnieszka and Conor were checking out every coastal zone in West Cork in early 2000 for a new home, (they were relocating from Dublin) and found Tralong House on the internet.

A stop over on the way to Kerry saw them a little ambivalent about the property — it was obvious it needed work — but three weeks later they’d put in an offer and it was accepted and then, as they say, the fun started.

Conor, who’s a director of O’Mahony Pike Architects, was setting up the Cork office at the time and the couple sought competent builders to restore and extend the house as their primary home.

They chose Maeve Cotter for the job — an architect who found it so hard to get the right kind of craftsmen when tendering for clients that she set up her own construction company, Belclare Projects.

And as work proceeded, the couple’s views on the project began to diverge: for Kinsella it was a project that would show the adaptability of vernacular housing to modern living.

In Cebo’s view, as soon as the depth and expense of the renovation revealed itself, it might have been better to demolish the house and start again, but she relented:

“It [the house] was stripped out completely and I almost cried when I saw it — there was clay between the stones and no mortar — we had to do all we could to damp proof it and then the stones were weeping — the moisture was caught in the two metres thick walls and it’s taken until now to dry out, which is why we decided to finish with lime plaster”

“You could have done it cheaper,” Kinsella says, “but you’d always have the problem of damp and we didn’t see a choice but to bring it up to standard.”

Cebo says the cost was high: “I wanted to knock it down — you could have built two new houses for what it cost — but then, that’s not the spirit of the place.” Kinsella adds: “luckily banks were throwing money around at the time.”

The couple didn’t want anything to block the view of the sea, so they knocked out the back walls for two extensions, but maintained the single room depth — they just opened up the sea views through the rest of the house.

They’re now quietly getting on with living in Tralong House and raising their family, even though Kinsella travels as far as Brazil to work on occasion.

However, they have created one of the most superb, understated transformations one could find.

Bought in 2005 — the apex of the boom — it took another year and a half of bottomless-pit funding until completion in 2007.

I had seen the house in its original state when it was first on the market and the staircase was treacherous, the rooms were dark and there was a certain, well, atmosphere there.

“Oh yes,” says Kinsella when I mention it: “Agnieszka thought the place was haunted, but in a good way — we’ve cleared that now.”

And they have — walking inside feels very different — this house is restored not just in its fabric, but also in its energy.

Tralong would have originally followed what Kinsella describes as a ‘child’s drawing plan’: door in the middle and windows to either side.

The couple wanted to retain that instinctive design and opened up the back walls of both the parlour and kitchen to create new cedar clad extensions which, along with the staircase gable, create an internal courtyard which allows shelter from the prevailing south-westerlies, but also opens up the views through the house and onto the garden. There are lovely surprises at every turn, but the predominant draw is still the bay and the sea, viewed from every room.

Internally, the house has a style which Kinsella refers to as ‘rough minimalism’: “Walls in rough lime plaster, no skirting or architraves, floors in polished concrete downstairs and oiled French oak upstairs.

“Carrera marble is used in bathrooms, stainless steel in the kitchen — an expression of materials in their natural state. This is not a showhouse,” he emphasises.

And there’s a Quaker-like simplicity in the kitchen furniture most of which is French oak designed by Cebo and commissioned in her native Poland. Wishbone chairs complete the arts and crafts feel.

In particular, Cebo’s square chairs are striking as is the double island unit in steel, with butcher’s block and Carrera marble worktop.

The rest of the kitchen is Bulthaup, through McNally Kitchens with a slender, steel worktop that runs from end to end and which fits exactly.

Kinsella refused to opt for a 25mm filler gap: the fact that the unit fitted exactly is testament to the quality of the workmanship, he says.

Above the steel is a cedar built, sliding kitchen window, all of 6 metres in length and made in Bantry by Murnane and O’Shea, who did all of the joinery internal and external joinery, (save for the sash windows), to specification.

There’s a shelved ceiling for wash lighting over the worktop area, and on the opposite wall, floor-to-ceiling units accompanied by a full length window with door leading out to an enclosed courtyard.

The rear of the kitchen houses a guest bathroom, hot press and utility and beyond it a clever, boot room with shower, built in cupboards in cedar, (including a dog bed) and access via full length sliding cedar doors to the main entrance yard, or the internal courtyard. Open both up and you have a direct corridor.

The courtyard is west-facing and gets the evening sun while the shaded part under a 2 m high wall, (growing healthy hops) is filled with shade-loving plants and has old limestone flags as stepping stones.

The second extension also overlooks the courtyard through wide sliding doors: (the house connects externally too) and its composed on a smaller space than the kitchen projection.

Here there’s a quiet, library area that connects to the original parlour of the house finished with a contemporary sofa from Inreda and a Lamino chair by Yngve Ekstrom. The new oak staircase rises from a wide hall, and on each level there are two rooms apiece, with main bathroom on the first floor.

The master bedroom on the first floor has a sunny bathroom extension facing south-west with corner window, and has some of the best views of the rolling hills to the rear.

The bathrooms all follow a similar, very spa-like theme with classic ware, oak fittings and marble walling — colour is confined to the materials used and occasional accessories.

The bedrooms are simple, just beds and occasional furniture, (albeit design classics) and the top landing is used as a home office with the most stunning direct view over the bay framed by a velux.

The gardens are quite untouched — save for the enviable vegetable beds, old hedges remain, as do trees, stone walls and the old corrugated roofed sheds that strike the right, dishevelled note as a counterpoint to the perfection of the new/old house.

There’s a Buddhist allegory there somewhere.