Home owner's expertise brought €595k Cork family home to new comfort levels

Oil central heating has been replaced with air-to-water set up, which has slashed heating costs

Walnut Creek is one of a small number of homes on decent sites, with easy access to Cork City, Blarney and Mallow. Pictures John Roche

Grenagh, Cork
€595,000
Size	357 (3,700 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6/7
Bathrooms	5
BER	A3

THE current owner of Walnut Creek seems to be the right man for the job — a professional plumber with a high reputation, he not alone finished out this large build when he and his family moved here four years ago, he also added and upgraded its many bathrooms and replaced the oil central heating boiler for the underfloor heating with an air-to-water set up, which added to comforts and slashed the heating costs.

Warmth now at Walnut Creek

“You couldn’t draw oil to it fast enough before,” he quips of the formner energy needs to heat a 3,700 sq ft home, over two levels, despite it being a quality build and constructed as recently as 2004/2005.

He put his money where his expertise was, changing and adapting the home heating to a far more efficient and economic air-to-water set-up, which powers the lower level's underfloor heating and radiators on the upper floor.

Thankfully, it all worked and made the changeover worthwhile going into a future of rising oil, gas and solid fuel prices and strictures, while adding to the liveability for the entire family.

He admits to a bit of nervousness when starting off, which saw him keep the old oil boiler as a back-up, ‘just in case,’ as retrofitting such relatively new heat sources and pumps to existing systems in older dwellings is still a learning curve for many.

Bedroom suite

He adds that he’s more confident now when clients ask him about heating upgrades as, he rightly points out, if he’s asking people to shell out as much as €10,000 for a new, alternative heat source when doing energy retrofits, “you want to be sure it’s going to work perfectly for them”. 

All-stone exterior at Walnut Creek

He bought Walnut Creek only a few years ago, moving and trading up to a family home on a large rural site at a spot called Kilmona, yet one almost on the edge of Cork City. 

Sunken lounge

It’s set just off the N20, near Whitechurch on this side of the Cork-Mallow/Limerick Road, but part of Grenagh parish too, with Grenagh over on the other side of that road. That road? Who remembers the ‘old’ Mallow Road, that tortuous route of old, which held more twists and turns along its modest length than any notorious spaghetti junction.

That original Mallow Road is now a far safer and more tranquil road, and Walnut Creek is set on 0.79 of an acre running along it, with Cork-Mallow/Dublin rail line off on the far side and down a bit.

Walnut Creek is sizeable inside and out

It’s one of a small number of quite sizeable one-off homes on decent sites, and residents here stress the easy access to Cork City on either or both roads, as well as to Blarney, Mallow and more spots just a tad "under the radar". 

The family bought here in 2017, with the Price Register showing Walnut Creek selling then for €320,000. Other Kilmona sales range from under that amount right up to €575,000 back in 2014.

Expansive kitchen

Back then, Walnut Creek was lived in by a single man who hadn’t made use of the upper floor of the big footprint dormer bungalow, but that’s now remedied. It’s fully finished on all levels, with scope for up to seven bedrooms, but is used by its current occupants with a broader range of room uses, including a home gym/studio, home office, large playroom/den… and then some.

It comes fresh to market with agents Sheila O’Flynn and Gillian McDonnell of Sherry FitzGerald, carrying a €595,000 AMV, and qualifies for the description of being a walk-in job.

Externally, it’s distinguished by things such as limestone cladding the entire exterior, on all four aspects, with soldier-like brick lintels and as door arches, which must have been quite the painstaking job of labour to achieve, to a high standard.

It’s set towards the front/road side of its good site, with a private stone-flagged back garden with very large patio and raised beds ready to burst into summer life. Extra touches outside, apart from the stone finish which will age very gently and stay maintenance free, are a rainwater harvesting tank, BBQ area and recently erected tall timber fence and gate linking the main house to a recently added large Steeltech shed, with roller door — perfect for storage, sports equipment, hobby gear, workshop or bike store — with security features all in place for the owner’s small, curated collection of pristine motorbikes.

Kilmona’s Walnut Creek gets its name from the abundant use of walnut timbers used in many of the ground floor rooms, including several bedrooms, and most notably in the large sitting room/dining rooms, reached off a tiled hall and entry point and pivot, down a few steps and super-bright, accessing a large south-west facing patio.

Off to the far left is a huge kitchen/family dining room, with a long central island and units with white stone worktops all on one side, with a walk-in pantry/bar on the opposite side.

There’s also a good-sized utility, with sheltered back garden access off this room, and a further flow of space down into the sitting and dining room, down a walnut-floored step. This main hub of the home has a stone fireplace at the dining end and a wall-mounted large TV screen as a sort of second hearth.

The undisputed main bedroom is away at the house’s very far end, almost apartment sized, with feature arched window with louvre shutters overlooking the back garden. It has a big dressing room/walk-in robe, fully railed and shelved in oak. The private bathroom, meanwhile, is tiled, with a double-ended free-standing bath and what’s describe by Sherry FitzGerald as a cavern shower enclosure, with elaborate rainfall shower.

Two other ground-floor bedrooms, facing the front lawn and drive, share a Jack and Jill en suite, and there’s a further multi-purpose room/home office also at ground.

Above are several more bedrooms/multi-purpose rooms with built-in storage and Veluxes in the sloping ceilings. One has an en suite and another, to the front and used as a gym, has a feature circular window set over the main front door.

Walnut Creek's vendors are seeking to relocate to the western side of Cork City and, with children moving out for college years, are likely to downsize a bit, near older family generations and homestead roots.

Family friendly

Internally, it’s quite a different house to what it was four years ago, and is now fully finished and colonised. It is ready to do family accommodation duties all over again, on a school bus route even, and with talks of a rail station reopening at Stoneview, Blarney.

Under the Government’s 2040 National Development Plant to boost Cork and Limerick’s populations and foster greater economic links, work is due to start on the M20 in coming years at a likely cost of €1.2bn.

It will relegate the current N20 to yet another ‘old Mallow Road’ status, and is likely to run from around Blarney/the North Ring Road out past Mallow, bypassing Buttevant and Charleville, making even Limerick a closer drive once complete by an estimated 2027.

VERDICT: Big and well-finished home in an accessible north-of-city setting.