Room to Improve? Hardly. Done deal at Cork's Fernwalk thanks to its architect, who's now working with Dermot Bannon
Bright new rear kitchen/living/dining/living room at 46 Fernwalk, Greenfields, Ballincollig, Co Cork on the market for €775,000 with Sherry FitzGerald.
|
Greenfields, Ballincollig, Cork |
|
|---|---|
|
€775,000 |
|
|
Size |
262 sq m (2,820 sq ft) |
|
Bedrooms |
4 + attic |
|
Bathrooms |
3 |
|
BER |
B2 |
THERE aren’t too many Irish houses that you could go into early on a wet and dreary Monday morning, just as December wheels around and as a six-week lockdown lasting right through a darkening November grinds out, and find the kitchen to be inviting, light, bright and airy. Especially a north-facing one.
But, that’s the trick that has been very successfully pulled off at 46 Fernwalk, after an extension and reordering, done around 2012 by its owners. They’ve been here since 2002, and the next 'phase' a decade on was overseen by Cork-based architect Donnchadh O’Sullivan, who now works with Dermot Bannon.
They had initially bought it new as a 2,200 sq ft two–storey house, as a one-off from independent builders Lucey & Sheehan, on a serviced site in what was then an innovative ‘choice’ offer by developers O'Flynn Construction, of serviced sites, or completed homes within a larger scheme to allow for diversity and personal choice. (Sites at the time had sold from €30,000 up to €70,000.
A one-off family home par excellence, on a good-sized wide site with an immaculate back garden as a ‘room outside’ with corner seating set up on a limestone base to catch the afternoon and evening sun, after input from architect Donnchadh O’Sullivan and equally from Fiona O’Keeffe Interior Design, it’s a walk-in proposition done and re-done to a high standard for home-hunters at the upper end of the price scale in Cork city’s western suburbs.
No 46’s owner had worked with busy Cork interiors specialist O’Keeffe after their purchase in the early 2000s, and drafted her skills back in again a decade later as family grew, needs altered, and as they looked at extension options.
So, they made overtures to Dermot Bannon Architects, as Bannon’s personal design and media profile was already in the ascendant, as he was becoming a ‘household’ name.
Dermot Bannon was unable to take on the commission, but recommended instead a Cork colleague Donnchadh O’Sullivan. Subsequently, Mr O’Sullivan has joined the Dermot Bannon Architecture team, working from Cork.
Fresh as a daisy, despite the winter season of its sale, this 3,000 sq ft home, now extended up in the attic for a three-story layout (and then more notably out the back too) is listed this week with estate agent Norma Healy of Sherry FitzGerald who confidently guides it at €775,000.
She’s confident of it for several reasons, but apart from its quality, space, and accessibility just off the Ballincollig bypass and Killumney Road within Greenfields, it’s especially due to the current shortage of good trade-up stock not just in the western suburbs, but across the southern city’s entire market and districts.
Cases in point are the super-swift sale of 4 Regency Close, off the Model Farm Road. No 4 was a 1970s built 2,300 sq ft detached home in red brick with a suitably colonial-style feature for its ‘regency’ monicker such as the distinctive, tall white pillars or columns its porch entrance.
No 4 Regency Close featured in these pages on October 31, guiding €795,000 with Sherry’s Norma Healy and Sheila O’Flynn, and went ‘sale agreed’ after bidding within two weeks, and is likely to show on the Price Register early next year as having fetched c €785,000.
Also, a done deal with Sherry FitzGerald is No 22 The Manor on the Model Farm Road. An extended 4,700 sq ft detached one-off within a development, it went for sale in 2019 guiding €1.22million and has now sold for nearly €1.1 million, yet to appear on the Price Register.
So, even though there’s a supply of new trade-up stock at a place like Steeplewoods, by the start of the Killumney Road and being done by the O’Flynn Group, schemes, plus others by O’Callaghan Properties and a cluster of big detached at Dennehy’s Cross under advancing construction on the site of the old house Vailima, there’s clearly more demand than the market can supply.
Ergo house prices holding up, remarkably well, particularly at the upper-mid market level where a cohort of families remain unperturbed by any Covid-19 employment and economic concerns.
One thing that’s sure about No 46 Fernwalk’s arrival on a receptive market — there isn’t a penny to be spent on it after its updates done by its now-departing owners, bar to make any personal decorative changes.
The work done here came along nearly a decade ago, and was done in two stages. First up, the attic was converted to create two top-level, multi-purpose rooms, plus a landing with full stair access, with sections into the front’s roof gables, and with Veluxes to the back.
Done to a good standard, carpeted and quiet, these rooms don’t meet building regs to be properly described as bedrooms, with c 6’ ceiling heights, and right now are being practically used as a home office on one side and a comfortable study for a school-goer on the other, aided and abetted by good broadband speeds.
That’s the icing on top of a mid-level which has four bedrooms with good storage options and one with en-suite with shower. The main family bathroom has had a refit of late, with a bath big enough for a good stretch set into a gleaming, stepped walnut timber surround.
It picks up on the extensive use of walnut as a quality wood of choice linking this homes three levels, exemplified by its use as a handrail for the stairs, replacing the original rail on painted spindles and going from attic to the hall, where there are superb walnut floors done by O’Flynns in Douglas, seen also in the one of the two main, front reception rooms, each of which has deep bay windows facing south and the enclosed, private and well-planted up front garden.
But, ah, good and all as the house is from the hall and stairs upwards, and to the front in very well-finished rooms with excellent hardwood joinery, it’s the back extension that will sway viewers and be the sale clincher.
A single-storey add-on ‘box’ with lots of glazing, it absolutely fits the current ‘wish-list’ of open, airy, and bright family-friendly living spaces, and spans 39 sq meters, just under the 40 sq m planning permission threshold exemption.
It was formed by adding on, with a flat-roofed wing with a visually distinct feature tall roof light in a pitched glazed frame inset into a membrane roof, and with wall glazing to the west and north.
However, as well as creating this great room with its spacious proportions (30‘ by 25’, or 7.88m by 9.38 m), interior designer Ms O’Keefe also suggested an interior kitchen wall be moved from the original kitchen to allow for a bigger hall, as a balance, almost as an ‘ante-chamber’ to the back, where a dog-leg in the hall also opens to a good-sized utility room, and a guest WC as a sort of service wing, with exterior access.
The kitchen/dining/family room’s turnaround has made the utmost of the otherwise relative drawback of a northerly aspect, and it’s all down to the roof light, really.
It was done by local firm, Ken Matson’s 20/20 Windows & Glazing, and apart from drawing in every available bit of light, it also adds a third, visual dimension to the wide and deep room, which then gets bounced around by very pale large ceramic floor tiles.
The room is 26’ by 26’ at its largest (the family area ducks back in a bit more deeply to the core than the kitchen after some of the abundant extra news space was conceded to the hall, and a feature here is a wall-mounted gas fire from Flame by Design, remote-controlled and the house also has Nest heating controls, with gas central heating, and rads, plus the ‘belt and braces’ installation of underfloor heating in the new extension.
The BER’s now an A3 after an insulation improvement, with cavity walls now pumped right up to the gables/attic level, and glazing in the new room is a mix of triple for windows, and double for the large sliding door to the back garden and patio (again, 20/20 Windows & Glazing.) Kitchen units and island are by Celtic Interiors, with in-frame units by the walls with capacious and discrete storage (you’d want to know where things like the fridge are concealed) and centrepiece is a wide stainless steel Smeg range cooker., with hob and griddle plus double ovens.
Al ground floor joinery, and some of that upstairs, was replaced and updated, with new doors, skirtings, architraves and floors, and shelving and TV stand in one of the reception rooms is in matching walnut, while another room is carpeted: a Roger Oates wool runner graces the stairs, the start of hushed underfoot carpeting for the upper floors and calm teenagers’ bedrooms. In terms of interior finishes, Fiona O’Keeffe got to use Cork stalwart firms like Ken Jackson Interiors for soft furniture, and Cogan Interiors also for fabrics, and there’s nothing flash here that’s going to date any time soon.
Paints are from Farrow & Ball ranges, and fabrics from high-end brands such as Osborne & Little, Zoffany and Romo combining for a cohesive whole.
Outside No 46 has off-street parking for several cars, to the front and side, with a side access option to the back garden, and with a covered walk-through store on the right.
The owner put a lot of work into the back garden, with Kilkenny limestone fringing a wall by the back patio, while a striped lawn rises very gently up to a walled back boundary. Those block walls have been rendered and painted white, dotted with maturing trees and with some ivies crowning wall tops for a softening effect, good too for birdlife.
There’s a pretty timber shed with power supply adjacent (thanks to junction boxes for exterior lights under trees) and on the far, opposite corner is a pristine limestone-paved seating area, done by landscaper Dan Buckley and which gets the last vestiges of the evening sun.
The Price Register shows 19 Fernwalk, Greenfields resales in the past decade, but very few are of this type and scale, and indeed of condition.
No 85, with 2,900 sq ft, came for sale over a year ago, guiding €690,000 also with Sherry Fitz, and sold for €620,000, and while the top price bearer so far is No 7, which made €630,000 also in 2091, a near neighbour to No 46 made very close to €1m back in the mid-2000s.
VERDICT: Top finished No 46 carries a Greenfields price premium for lots of obvious reasons, having overcome its rear aspect by clever design
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
