On your marks for six-minute house

A home which has had previous lives as a creche and a shop gets a gorgeous transformation, says Tommy Barker

Grange, Douglas, Cork

[table][row][column]Price[/column][column]€475,000[/column][/row][row][column]Size[/column][column]195 sq m (2,100 sq ft)[/column][/row][row][column]Bedrooms[/column][column]5+1[/column][/row][row][column]Bathrooms[/column][column]3[/column][/row][row][column]BER[/column][column]C1[/column][/row][/table]

NOW a five/six-bed home where the six children have all flown the family nest, to South Africa, Australia, London and, shortly Rome, No 79, Clifton Grange has its very own chequered and much travelled path to what now comes back up for sale.

Dating to the 1960s or 1970s, this detached, two-storey corner home just off the main Grange road above Cork’s Douglas suburb was built ‘day one’ as a local, corner shop. It served its neighbours well for several decades, with the shop owners living upstairs, and retailing from the ground floor.

However, with the fluctuating fortunes of corner and suburban shops, a SuperValu’s presence across the road more or less meant the shutters had to be pulled down on small scale retailing from this residential heartland pitch.

And, it probably didn’t help that an Aldi subsequently moved in next to Ryan’s busy SuperValu, more or less putting the tin hat on any shop revival notions.

However, No 790 Clifton Grange took a career diversion when it sold the second-last time around. Its ground floor was converted to a creche, run by a family who had a number of Cork City and suburban creches during the height of things in the 2000s, at which time children and carers ruled the roost at ground level while its upper floor was converted from shopkeepers’ private quarters to private language school.

Truly, the place was worked hard for its living, at least until the downturn came. The creche business folded, and for a while No 79 stood empty and a bit forlorn at the entrance to the niche residential enclave Clifton Grange, a mix of bungalows, semi-ds and some detached homes,quite a melange of styles, but all sharing the conveniently quiet setting, near shops(!), services, church, medical centre and schools.

“We call it the six-minute house, because it is so convenient to everything, to Douglas village on one side, the Kinsale Road roundabout for city access, and to the airport,” say the couple who’ve timed the trip many times over to the airport, when picking up returning offspring.

Generally, the now-adult ‘children’ text when they land, and the ‘designated pick-up driver’ gets in gear, and gets in the car, for a pick up at the airport doors. A kettle put on to boil leaving No 79 for the round trip to the airport will still be hot enough to make a cuppa with by the time they get back.

If you get the idea the couple behind No 79’s transformation and smart cedar cladding detailing know a thing or two about property, location and a bit about business you could be right. This is the sixth or seventh house they’ve owned, either building from scratch or doing up, and willingly describe themselves as serial renovators.

Their first project was a timber- frame home in the country, and they moved on to cottage restoration and other projects, honing their skills as they went, and almost incrementally getting closer and closer to the city with each move.

Ironic, then, that they ended up with the most convenient location, and the biggest house, at a time when their kids were decanting and the nest was emptying.

In fact, the youngest, aged 22 after a degree in geography, is now doing a masters degree in International Planning and Transport, in London, having discovered in college year one that she could fly to places like Budapest for a weekend, for about the cost of a night out on the Washington Street ‘strip’ in Cork, just by travelling oh, say six minutes up the Airport Hill from home, courtesy of ‘the folks’ taxi service.

Putting No 79 up for sale as a fully finished and utterly transformed entity, the folks themselves don’t know where they’ll be in 2019, or what ‘forwarding address’ they can give to their domestic diaspora.

However, they have a yen to go again, and will project-hunt for novel and unexpected opportunities, once No 79 is sold. They mention a site by a ravine...

In the interim, the now completely domesticated, and updated, No 79 Clifton Grange is gleamingly fresh to market as a late autumn offer, guided at €475,000 by estate agent Michael O’Donovan of Savills, who sold the former creche to the couple when it was in a rather more sorry state. (It had been on the market in 2012, but it was 2014 before the sale closed and transformative work could begin. The Price Register shows No 79 selling for €190,000 in 2014.)

“People thought were mad buying it and taking on all the work,” they say of their move to invest heavily, in terms of time and money, circa 2012, when economic and market recovery was then as much a hope as a possibility.

She’s a Cork woman, he’s a Dub, who says he grew up with his carpenter father in a small inner city house, learning skills from an early age, so he could ‘read’ a building. He went back on the original plans for this two-storey property’s construction and once they saw it was built with a cross section of I-beams and steels, realised that it could be opened up internally with very little structural disruption, so they dug in, and went all out for open plan.

There’s a huge core of kitchen/dining and family living at its centre, with double aspect, east and west, super-bright almost all day through, and nearly 40ft from one side to the other, with distinct gardens/outdoor rooms on either flank, with intermittent cedar trim, and the handy back-up now of a detached home office/ den/workspace, also faced in warm-hued cedar sheeting.

While the kitchen/living/dining is undoubtedly the scene-setter, it’s aided and abetted by a series of small rooms on either side: a double aspect wood-burning Boru stove heats both the open-plan core, and a smaller, more private family living room next door, reached from the wide hall, which was originally the shop-keepers’ private side access to the upstairs.

Across on the other side, via the kitchen/ family area, is a back wing (it used to serve the creche staff) comprising a good-sized utility with garden access, a plant room for the zoned modern heating set-up, and also at ground is a bedroom, next to guest bathroom with shower, so it’s highly adaptable for inter-generational living/au pair/ guests.

Overhead are five bedrooms, three of them doubles, two are singles, plus main family bathroom. One of the double bedrooms (which had been a kitchen when this upper floor was self-contained living over the shop) has an en suite bathroom.

Everything is crisp, clean and modern internally, redecorated completely with all-new bathrooms, floors, all windows are triple-glazed, and insulation is all upgraded in the walls, while the attic (with Stira access) has 300mm of insulation.

Heating is mostly delivered underfloor at ground level, with rads elsewhere. Plus, the double sided Boru wood burning stove is both a visual feast, and a handy back up for instant, ‘real’ heat, and has an external air feed, so there are no internal draughts.

Savills auctioneer Michael O’Donovan says the 2,100 sq ft 79 Clifton Grange is “a stylish, five-bedroom detached property, extensively renovated and refurbished, set on an ultra-private corner site, which was extensively renovated and refurbished, and externally landscaped for easy maintenance, and for catching the sun at either end of the day.”

On the entrance to the Clifton Grange estate, the former shop’s drive is now a private garden, complete with astroturf-style lawn, with several sections retained and framed for feature trees, while the feature here is the rearranged window layout, with black triple glazed units.

The gardens can be accessed independently from either side, or via a slender, rear linking passage, while the paved and decked far garden has sunny sit-out seating, and access to a detached home office, also clad in immaculately tended and treated cedar.

Other quality set-off touches include some granite paving and external steps. There’s off-street parking for several cars and presentation externally is as fresh outside as inside.

VERDICT: Having served as a shop, creche and a school No 79’s now happy to make itself at home.