Designed to impress

Reduced price and some terrific views for quality city pied a terre, writes Tommy Barker

PROFESSIONAL design skills have made the very most of 1 Lee Cottages, a modern make-over of a traditional terraced city cottage with engrossing views over the Cork’s River Lee and the Lee Fields weir by County Hall.

It featured 18 months ago in these pages when it was new to market. Now a price reduction and a change of selling agent has put it back on the radar of house-hunters looking for a quality city pied a terre.

It’s guided at €210,000 by Clare O’Sullivan of Savills, which is about 25% off the early 2011 asking price, and she says it is impressing viewers all over again, abetted by warmer (but wet again) summer months when compared to its chilly January 2011 launch.

Not that this house is ever cold inside, it’s as cosy as you’d want, thanks to a full re-build, extra insulation, double glazing, underfloor heating and more: there’s a contemporary solid fuel stove, but most days, you’d be baked if you light it, says its owner, Jane Dennehy, whose parents are in the design game as architects/interior designers, and she has featured in RTE’s Showhouse challenge.

No 1 Lee Cottages (previously the family home of writer and broadcaster Matt Cooper) brought in the skills-sets of various Dennehy family members, and is now an ‘upside down’ home with its largely open-plan living area upstairs for light and views, an airy eyerie with a funky feel-good factor. Its two bedrooms, meanwhile, are at ground level, and for utility and adaptability, there’s a bathroom at each level also.

Location is great, just west of Wellington Bridge beyond Sunday’s Well, by the Victorian design and engineering masterwork the waterworks, now home to an industrial and ecological-themed museum, and UCC’s a short walk away, as are healthy riverside walks and paddles. This property offer is one of six modest terraced homes with river and weir aspects.

The house’s designer has maximised every scrap of space, yet has good storage and display space — under window seats in the 20’ by 20’ living room, for example, making up for the lack of an attic as the ceilings go up to the roof’s apex in the main living quarters.

Effectively, what’s on offer here is the equivalent of a duplex apartment, as there’s no rear garden or yard, so what you see from the road is what you get, with the bonus of a graveled, colourful south-facing front garden, handy to throw a deckchair onto of a sunny day.

Light penetrates the full upstairs interior, through to the galley kitchen with its creamy gloss units, and a neat touch are the double sliding doors which retracting into the landing’s side walls, and other glass walls minimise noise and create a sense of space, while still keeping light in full flight. Other building materials used include porcelain floor tiling, oak floor boards, and oak handrails along the cheerful, painted stairs with striped painted runner up its midst.

Ground floor bedrooms aren’t overly large, but the front one manages to squeeze in an en suite shower room, making for three bathrooms in all, while there’s a utility/laundry off the upstairs landing in a slender rear annexe. And, setting the tone for what’s to follow on in virtually every square foot within, there’s a pretty and practical front porch as a welcoming note.

VERDICT: The best of goods, in a modest-sized package.