Up the creek with paddles, a canoe and a cabin at The Bungalow - all for just €250,000
This smart, insulated multi-purpose cabin is a sale bonus at the River Blackwater-set The Bungalow, near Templenoe, for sale for €250,000 via agent Paul O'Driscoll
|
Fermoy, Co Cork |
|
|---|---|
|
Price: €250,000 |
|
|
Size |
120 sq m (1,300 sq ft) +attic +300 sq ft cabin |
|
Bedrooms |
3 |
|
Bathrooms |
2 |
|
BER |
D2 |
Is it time for a name-change at The Bungalow?
It’s too small a word now to describe this upgraded and modestly extended Blackwater Valley-set family home, with a bang-on-trend 300 sq ft log cabin in its back garden, done with specialist skills, and offering ‘snug as a bug in a rug’ creature comforts.
A well-able couple relocated to this Templenoe setting, then home to a traditional cottage, on two-thirds of an acre just a short spin upriver of Fermoy and Castlehyde back in 2005, as the property market reached its dizzying zenith.
The original was a tiny stone construction, which was upgraded a bit by them in 2010 and into 2011, a hard winter. The family decamped to a log cabin they had designed and built in the back garden, initially as a home office for remote working. They moved into it again in 2015, when they extended the cottage/now The Bungalow to the side and back, and put in a large bathroom/wetroom for a son with mobility issues.
Now with three sons, and keen to be close to schools and services in Fermoy, they’ve taken on a renovation challenge at the old Presentation Convent and its fabulous courtyard building in the heart of the town, The Bungalow is on the market with local Ballyholey-based auctioneer Paul O’Driscoll who guides at an appealing €250,000.
“We would love to be able to bring the cabin with us. In fact, I am probably more sentimental about this than the house, but this is not possible for us to move it,” says co-owner Debbie Uí Chinnéide regretfully, who explains that at the time they bought she had been working as a roof truss designer with McMahons in Fermoy (formerly Barry's Timber).
The Irish construction sector had started to slow down in the mid-2000s, McMahon’s manufacturing plant moved to Drogheda and Debbie moved first to Premier Homes in Midleton and then to Kenmare Timber Frame, and as its Kerry production plant was a long distance away from Fermoy “I worked remotely for four days of the week with one day in the office.” Does work balance sound familiar to anyone in 2021’s pandemic times?
The family hit on the cabin idea as a home office as space was so tight in the original cottage once a toddler was on hand, so Debbie used her design skills to come up with 20’ by 18’ cabin “using what I was designing every day, roof trusses,” and including a sheltering overhang above a balcony stoop in galvanised steel.
Her aesthetic and savvy layout saw a central area kept open with knee walls on each side, a collar just below the apex, and doubled up knee walls giving a wall thickness of 300mm, insulated with Ecocycle recycled newspapers.
The base had telegraph poles used as pile foundations supporting two wooden beams which held the braced trusses, with two timber frame gable panels each end, with the building more or less done by Fiachra Ó Cinnéide and a group of friends…” it was a bit like a barn-raising,” Debbie recalls.
“Fiachra did a lot of the remaining work: felting, sheeting, paneling, interiors, creating the sleeping loft, along with a bit of help from the carpentry crew courtesy of Kenmare Timberframe,” Debbie explains and they use a pot-bellied stove for heating. “It really is super warm, so much so it can get too hot in the loft and we have to ditch some of the heat. We clad the cabin in larch and left it untreated. The larch is a beautiful pinky/orange colour and has weathered to grey,” she adds.
While its time as a home office was short-lived (redundancy hit in 2008), it also stepped in as overflow space, temporary accommodation during build phases at the original cottage/bungalow, and is currently used as a workshop for upholstery.
And, oh, the south-facing 'Bungalow' is no slouch either, with insulation added under a redone and reslated roof and with underfloor heating in both the old and new sections.
Estate agent Paul O’Driscoll observes that “a lot of the old character of the cottage has been kept,” instancing things like some raised wood-sheeted or latticed ceilings, retained old internal doors, and some timber floors, etc.
Recently, he says, “The Bungalow has had a refurbishment and a modern extension built to the rear which links the old with the new. The original part of the property has an entrance porch, sitting room, and three spacious bedrooms, some with fireplaces. The new extension incorporates a new entrance hall, large bathroom, a kitchen cum dining area, and a family room.” A steep, novel crafted staircase leads to an attic level 38’ x 9’, laid out with two rooms and a further bathroom, with wood floors and Veluxes, handy for a number of uses but not qualifying as ‘habitable space’ under building regs, and there’s also a covered area by one gable, handy for outdoor entertaining, pets or bike, and sports gear storage.
Location is at Templenoe and Cregg, midway between Fermoy and pretty Ballyhooley, facing south on its c two-thirds of an acre over scenic stretches of the mighty River Blackwater, with Cork city about a 30-minute commute away via the M8 or back roads, for the time when you just have to leave the house, and peel yourself out of the cabin.
VERDICT: Pandemic times? No cabin fever here.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
