Down to the river to play at deluxe €1.25m Curraghbinny Road home

Bayswater, on a large shoreline site, is quality all the way

Sat, 13 May, 2023 - 00:00

Catherine Shanahan Pictures: Lyne Media

Curraghbinny, Cork
€1.25m
Size	386 sq m 4,152 sq ft
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	C1

Living in No 1 Bayswater could make you forget to do the dishes or make the beds because the view is simply too distracting or because you keep confusing it with a boutique hotel.

When it comes to quality and bespoke flourishes, this Curraghbinny Road home is right up there, from the cleverly hidden coffee station in the très raffiné kitchen, to separate His and Her ensuites off the main bedroom, to ‘The 313 Snug’, a room with its name up in lights, the kind of space Roger Sterling or Don Draper might hang out in, after a day on the set of Mad Men.

It’s a playful room and one the woman of the house says her husband is particularly fond of, while she gets a kick out of the under-the-stairs loo where a grinning Mona Lisa hangs in a gilt frame, queen of all she surveys.

Both rooms are painted Farrow and Ball Studio Green, as is the front lounge, the go-to room for relaxation, and reading the Sunday newspapers, amid polished timber, reading lamps, side tables and gilt-edged mirrors.

It’s glaringly obvious, when walking through No 1 that the owners had a very clear plan for what they wanted when they bought this super-size home for €910,000 just 18 months ago. They’ve transformed it utterly, investing serious amounts of cash in the process.

In the ground floor alone, they used 150 bags of levelling compound. “You could roll a ball down the hallway, it was so uneven”, the owners say. The entire ground floor had to be levelled before new floors could be laid. Having been levelled, painted and floored, the main hall is now almost a room in itself, where the focal point is a Jupiter 550XL 11kw woodburning stove, set into a stylish fireplace.

Honey-coloured Majestic Oak flooring was chosen for all of the main downstairs rooms, with wood giving way to pretty Delforno Tiles in the crisp entrance foyer, the boot room and the understairs loo.

The house is full of textured loveliness and antique furniture pieces, sourced from Paddy Dunne Antiques and Restoration on Cork City’s Tramore Road.

Opposite the front-facing Studio Green rooms, is evidence of further significant work undertaken by the current owners: the opening up of the south-facing downstairs living space. Double doors take you through from the hallway to a huge, open plan area, where the formal dining area opens into the handsomely sleek kitchen (a wall was removed to create this layout).

Before you start salivating over the Calacatta Gold Quartz giant island worktop (3m x 1.3m) your eyes will be drawn to the view beyond the dining area’s glazed back wall, and down towards the shoreline at the bottom of the garden, where the Owenabue river flows into the estuary, before making its way towards Crosshaven, passing through heavenly Drake’s Pool, a popular mooring spot, and on past the world’s oldest yacht club, the RCYC.

It’s all very tranquil and pretty, made more so by the view across to the opposite bank where the French Furze old rail track walkway takes the scenic route from Carrigaline to Crosshaven. It’s this south-facing waterfrontage that elevates these Bayswater properties beyond the status of just Very Large Family Homes.

Other factors that push it into the realm of highly-desirable dwelling include the land that comes with it (0.81 acres); the fantastic garden landscape (man-of-the-house is a landscape gardener, although the garden was in pretty good shape when they bought it); privacy (you are not overlooked) and location (10 minutes from Crosshaven, Kinsale, Douglas, the Jack Lynch Tunnel, Cork Airport).

On top of all of these perks, you have the house itself, where everything is done to perfection, by owners who had not bargained on selling up in the short term. Hence the investment in top-of-the-range everything, from the shiny new kitchen by Celtic Kitchens in Douglas; to new electrical fittings throughout the house; to new door hardware throughout; to the overhauling of the underfloor heating system (ground and first floor) and the installation of a new boiler and expansion tanks, with the whole system flushed and a magnetic filtrations system added; to the addition of a solar-heating compatible water tank; to the installation of two new fireplaces and new stoves (hall, living room) and new floor insulation downstairs, with the overall effect of upgrading the energy efficiency rating from C3 to C1, with scope for new owners to get it to a ‘B’ by adding solar panels.

In addition to all this heavy-lifting, new carpet was laid throughout the upper two floors (Nickle Mint Grey); all four bathrooms/ensuites were renovated, replastered and retiled, with new sanitary ware fitted; the entire house interior was repainted (Colour Trend Watch House, F & B Skimming Stone and F &B Studio Green); new curtains and blinds were hung; a new monitored alarm system was fitted and new wall panelling was installed in the foyer.

The main bedroom got a major makeover, with the wall to an adjoining room knocked to create a suite. In addition to the separate His and Her ensuites, there are His and Her walk-in closets and a sitting room.

There’s a balcony too, off the bedroom section, where new decking has just been laid.

You’re waking up to garden and estuarine views and where better to enjoy them than from that balcony. Or from the large sandstone patio with its curved, raised flower beds, at the top of the garden.

Or from the decking halfway down the expansive garden.

Or from a little seating area right inside a pretty blue gate that opens onto a shingle and mudflat shoreline at low tide, or a glistening body of water when the tide is in.

To make the most of their waterfront setting, No 1’s owners had planned to put in a pier at the end of the garden later this year, but as work necessitates selling up their home and relocating, it will be up to new owners to follow through. There’s precedent: some of the neighbours in the upmarket seven-home development have installed little jetties or pontoons for launching dinghies and kayaks and the like. If you’ve a yacht to moor, you’ll be heading for Drake’s Pool though, or the marina at the RCYC.

Chances are, you won’t want to stray too far from the 4,152 sq ft, five-bed, five bathroom property: the level of comfort makes staycationing very attractive, and there’s a terrific choice of rooms. One not yet mentioned is the living room (in addition to lounge, snug, dining, kitchen) and it’s a contender for the most impressive.

A triple aspect room, its back wall is fully glazed at the garden end, with additional glazing on an adjoining wall. It’s a room of tastefully muted hues where the colour pop comes from beyond the glass, from the vivid shrubbery, and the warm patio and the glisten of the river in the near distance.

The owners love their home’s versatile, functional space (there’s even room for a gym on the top floor and a hobby area and more clothes storage, but it could also be a home office) and they say its south-facing garden “is a treasure, that continually reveals itself” vis-à-vis the changing water views and the very active bird and wildlife.

They’ve loved the countryside feel to Bayswater, just east of Carrigaline, where a new relief road has made things easier by allowing motorists to bypass Main Street. They particularly love the privacy and the proximity to Curraghbinny Woods, with its lovely amenity walks. And of course, the water views.

“There’s always something to watch on the water, canoes and kayaks or when the swans come down from Carrigaline and come into land – it's something else. We thought we’d be here for the next 10 years,” the woman of the house says.

Built in 2001 by Bride View Homes, No 1 is on a corner site, at the back of a quiet cul-de-sac, with access via electric gates.

Gardens out front are beautifully landscaped too. There’s plenty of parking and a 400 sq ft garage with attic. It could make a home office, although there’s plenty of room in the main house for same.

Selling agents are Trevor O’Sullivan and Pat Falvey of Lisney Sotheby’s, who are guiding at €1.25m. They predict strong interest from the ex-pat market.

“We have a number of buyers on our books looking for waterfront properties so we will be bringing this to them,” says Mr O’Sullivan, adding that the Bayswater home will be put on the Sotheby platform.

The agent had a good result recently with another waterfront property, River House, by the Bandon River, in Kinsale, which featured in these pages, and which he sold for €1.085m, having brought it to market in April for €950,000.

VERDICT: You may ditch travel plans forever once you settle in this luxury shoreline home.