Endsleigh property has potential

Relatively easy job to add extension to this Douglas home, Tommy Barker reports.

WHEN the man doing the viewings of 6 Endsleigh says it has (in that hackneyed estate agency description) ‘potential,’ he is wearing two hats to underpin his judgement.

Due to qualify as a professional architect this autumn, young twentysomething Andrew Guerin has spent holiday periods over the past few college years showing houses for sale — a sort of payback to his dad, Dennis Guerin who’s MD of Frank V Murphy & Co auctioneers.

Given his sales experience, and his design training, Andrew’s as qualified as most to see that elusive potential in houses — and No 6 starts off with good bones, decent-sized rooms, and a more than decent site size too, he approves. And, with sales hat back on, the location just off Cork’s Douglas Road (by the recently re-opened Maxol garage) is ace.

The west-aspected house, near Regina Mundi girls secondary school and facing a green strip with a tall cedar tree on it, needs pretty much everything upgraded: there hasn’t really been a lot spent on it in its five decades of existence. It has two reception rooms with fireplaces, a basic kitchen/diner, with utility off and basic loo, and main bathroom upstairs with shower (no bath,) and four bedrooms.

Andrew Guerin says it would be a relatively easy job to add a two-storey extension, in lieu of the 17’ by 7’ 9” garage, and drops the words ‘zinc roof’ and ‘open-plan spaces’ into the suggestion box.

A handful of the few dozen Endsleigh houses have already extended like this.

VERDICT: Great location, great prospects, but you’ll need a good architect to make best use of out of the east-facing rear aspect.