A beautiful transformation: A small house with a big heart

Tommy Barker visits a small home with a huge heart, upgraded after a quarter of a century unlived in.

Fri, 10 Apr, 2020 - 20:00

Tommy Barker

Tommy Barker visits a small home with a huge heart, upgraded after a quarter of a century unlived in.

When the owner of 29, St Mary’s Terrace went for a look-see at the property in 2013, it seemed somewhat frozen in aspic, preserved in a time warp from decades earlier. Even the calendar in the kitchen of this Midleton town home read 1989, with not a page since turned: that’s hardly surprising, as the property had been unlived in for a quarter of a century.

Set in a quiet cul de sac row of tiny terraced homes at the eastern fringes of Midleton town, just a minute from the N25 and roundabout, No 29 had been the home of a local woman who had gone into a nursing home 25 years earlier, and who continued to live to a good old age in care, while her home unfortunately lingered, unable to be sold as long as she was alive.

However, the long lapse in its inhabitation, and the consequent decay, didn’t phase the young woman who came to view, and who had lived close by for a period, knowing and liking the area, and its mix of residents, old and young.

With a family background broadly in the building line, and parents who had already built four or five houses for their own family as a sort of passion meets business, she deliberately set out to get a do-er up and a bit of a project.

That’s exactly what she got; father, mother and others rowed in with relish to the challenge of creating a first-time home for a fortunate daughter.

She got the keys on the Friday before Christmas in 2013, and they rolled up sleeves and rowed in in January 2014, spending four months on its transformation, taking down walls, digging up floors, renewing everything and adding on a single-storey extension to the back.

The flow of rooms changed, naturally, enough, and what had been a first floor with three bedrooms is now a floor with two larger bedrooms, both able to fit in a double bed, plus a main family bathroom.

Gone too was a long internal hall or corridor; so now once you come in the high-spec and air-tight front door, you arrive straight into the main living room, which is 6.9m or 22ft deep and 4.6m or 14ft wide, with feature electric flame effect fireplace on a party wall, facing the staircase and staircase.

Further behind is a compact kitchen, yet which gets in lots of countertop and integrated appliances, and next to it is a utility room and a guest bathroom, with a startling image of the ‘hipster doofus,’ Cosmo Kramer from TV’s sharp comedy soap Seinfeld.

A cottage-style half-door open to a back yard, while in front of No 29 this terraced house has a long garden across the access road, with parking for two cars, and a sit-out outdoor area, the only part of the ‘entire’ property not fully finished to a tee.

Since buying No 29, the woman of the house got married, her partner got to become a property co-owner without the sweat and bother of renovations, and 10 months ago they welcomed a baby boy to their home.

Both now are working from home due to lockdown restrictions: nonetheless they are ready (and fortunate) to move on to their next family life chapter. They’ve spotted “the house of my dreams,” says the woman who has already bought a house, done up a home, got married and is blessed with a child: it’s trade-up time, a drop of normality in a sea of uncertainty.

The house they hope to move to they had first viewed weeks ago, before the current lockdown. They did their second and subsequent viewing and deeper delving by way of video and virtual tours, with estate agent James Colbert behind the smooth process.

“I’d say I do more talking on the online video and virtual viewings than in an actual physical viewing”, Mr Colbert observes and is finding that with good enough quality Youtube video and back-up, plus live phone conversations, deals are happening. He’s even gone sale agreed on a clutch of one-off serviced sites in a scenic Cork harbour area, to overseas buyers, who have bought in, without ever setting a foot on their future house sites.

Somewhat smitten by the work done on this diminutive Midleton home of about 850sq ft, is Colbert who, like a handful of agents is managing to list new listing properties, while complying with social distancing guidelines. He has made it his ‘Property of the Month’, saying from the outside, looks can be deceiving as inside feels more spacious and “what appears to be an older-style, terraced home is in fact a refurbished property with open-plan living and modern appliances throughout.”

No 29 is effectively new, from the reinsulated walls in, with floors dug up and replaced, with insulation (making a warm home was the top request the buyer stipulated to her folks, having just previously lived in an ice-box apartment, above an empty commercial unit … brrr.)

The opposite now is the case here: 15 minutes after turning on the heating, the place is sweltering, while adding to the comforts internally are the replacement sliding sash uPVC double glazed windows, an aesthetic as well as a functional upgrade to this early 1900’s original build.

The vendor reckons those windows are one of the individual choices she’s happiest with doing here, along with the overall transformation, and she admits that she’ll be leaving with some real regrets as the terrace is quiet, with a good mix of very long-time residents, blended with young families and more recent arrivals. It’s the sort of place where neighbours regularly sit outside their front doors, with a cuppa and have chat and a catch-up.

She’s also pretty impressed with the amount of storage they managed to get into this pad when redoing it in 2014, with further additional tweaks, so there’s a Stira to attic storage, and space grabbed under and over the stairs, and even over the baby’s cot is a press that can hold a couple of suitcases.

Auctioneer James Colbert reckons No 29’s appeal will be to a single buyer or a couple, but he may also get investor interest, and as he’s only been talking on the phone so far while progressing inquiries, he hasn’t met any of the interested parties face-to-face yet, but ventures that “they sound young.”

He says there’s a mix of fun and functionality at No 29, and loves the innovative way the bright, main front bedroom has created a fitted wardrobe out of the ‘dead’ space above a stairs. It is within a short walk of the town centre in Midleton, as is the rail station and schools, and there’s a forest walk not far away for outdoor relaxation, at Ballyannan, possibly even within the current coronavirus 2km lockdown radius.

As a parting (long) shot, No 29’s selling agent claims that he can even throw in “the bonus of a lake view”, but admits it’s only a virtual one … you can see Midleton’s Lakeview Roundabout from the first-floor bedroom window!