Watch: House of the week: Skehard Road, Cork, €510,000

This is a modernised, detached house with good-sized, bright reception rooms and a private garden.

Sat, 22 Oct, 2016 - 01:00

Trish Dromey

Sq m: 201 (2,179 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 2

BER: D2

SKEHARD HOUSE is almost twice the property it once was and Skehard Road has changed around it so much, that it’s almost as if it has moved.

Back in the 1960s it probably stood out as the only detached house in a long development of houses built with a strip of front cladding, which at the time would have been distinctively modern and different.

Back then Mahon Point was still countryside and Skehard Road wasn’t quite on the beaten track.

Now the city has moved out to meet it and Skehard Road has become a busy thoroughfare and a sought-after residential area, while No 9 Skehard Road has gone from being a modest detached house to something much more substantial.

The current owners, who bought it 16 years ago, are mostly responsible for the transformation.

Adding first a single storey wing, then a two storey one and finally an attic conversion, they brought the square footage up to 2,179.

While the exterior is still identifiable as a 1960s property, the owners have made it so that the interior most definitely isn’t.

Adding wings on either side meant the abandonment of the idea that rooms could only be accessed from the central hallway.

Using several sets of double doors, the owners have created a series of interconnected spaces on the ground floor.

Decorating mostly in neutral shades of beige and cream, they floored most of it in solid oak.

A door from the hall leads to the original sitting room, which is longer than it used to be, and has a cast iron fireplace.

From here French doors open out to the garden while one set of double doors leads to the kitchen, and another to a large room in the single storey extension.

This space is used for TV watching, piano-playing, and other family activities.

A spacious, bright room with a vaulted ceiling, it has French doors at the front and a large window at the back.

Overlooking the garden at the rear, is a long kitchen area, which has hand painted pale yellow units topped with black counter tops on both walls — it opens through an archway at one end, to a wider dining area which opens out on to the garden.

A set of double doors in the dining room lead through to a second sitting room at the front of the house.

The ground floor layout has been created so that you can walk in one door from the hall, go through every room and come back through the opposite door in the hall.

Floored in black and white tiles, the hall has a half turn staircase, which may well be one of the few of the few original features inside the house.

The first floor now has four bedrooms instead of three and two bathrooms instead of one.

The two storey extension provided space for an additional double bedroom and a second bathroom.

In their most recent project, the owners added a staircase to the attic which they turned into a bright 22ft long room with a large dormer window at the front and three roof lights.

Planning legislation does not permit this to be used as living space.

Enclosed by hedging and white fencing at the rear, is a private lawned garden which has decked terraces outside both sets of double doors.

The front of the property is also sheltered by hedging and has a lawned area and driveway with space for two cars.

Guiding at €510,000 Shehard House is on the market with joint selling agents Cohalan Downing and Timothy Sullivan & Associates.

The Shehard Road location and the fact that it’s detached, are according to Malcolm Tyrell of Cohalan Downing, Skehard House’s two strongest selling points.

“If you are looking for a detached property in the Blackrock area you will find that many of them cost over €600,000 and some over €700,000,” he says.

Situated close to the city end of Shehard Row, the property is located within a short distance of Mahon Point and Douglas and is also within easy reach of the city centre.