Wonders worked at ground level

Extension’s open-plan design boosts appeal of house with easy commute, says Tommy Barker.

The extension to the back is fairly modest in size, but by opening up the ground floor a bit more at the same time, wonders have been worked with the ground-floor feel of 10 Deerpark Court, off Cork City’s Friars Walk.

The four-bed, semi-detached home is within an easy walk of the city centre, has a green area nearby, and is on a larger-than-standard corner site as well, notes its selling agent Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald.

He’s asking €310,000 for the 1,200 sq ft house, with light flooding the back, west-facing kitchen/dining space. Effectively, the back wall came out, replaced by a column and steel RSJs across the rear, with overhead Velux windows bringing extra light into the newly-created kitchen space, plus side room with glazed, full-height corner windows. This new room is now 18’x17’ as a result, and the front of the house has a 17’x11’ living room, with cast-iron stove mounted by the fireplace, and semi-solid wood flooring. There’s a ground floor guest WC and, overhead, three of the four bedrooms are doubles, none en-suite, while the main bathroom has a shower. Externally, the marginally wider-than-standard site has front parking.

VERDICT: The Deerpark location has proven itself as a super-handy inner-suburban scheme that makes for the easiest of daily city commutes: And, No 10’s one of the homes here that has moved with the times.