Buyers on a budget will love this reconditioned €285,000 council home in East Cork

The site this Killeagh house is on is of an era when generous gardens went hand-in-glove with local authority homes

Thu, 07 Dec, 2023 - 17:00

Catherine Shanahan Pictures: John Finn

Killeagh, East Cork
€285,000
Size	93 sq m (1000 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	B2

LESS resolute buyers might have walked away when No 2 Tim Daly’s Terrace last came to market five years ago. It wasn’t in great shape and anyone who finds it hard to visualise what a renovated house could look like wouldn’t have taken much inspiration from the neighbouring home.

At the time, both semi-ds in Killeagh bore the worn stamp of older local authority housing. Built in the 1940s, No 2's most redeeming features were affordability and a very big garden. The owners of No 2 bought it for €156,000 in 2018 and today you’d be hard pressed to guess that it was ever a council house. Whoever buys this time won’t need to visualise anything because the work is done. What will be obvious from the adjoining property is just how much work was done.

The couple that bought it, Laura and David, started doing up No 2 in October 2021, with work occasionally interrupted by the covid-19 pandemic. Still, it was done and dusted in about five months.

What they did transformed the house.

The original pokey kitchen was turned into a utility room, with an adjoining guest WC. A new kitchen was added to the rear, and above it, an extra bedroom and a new bathroom. No 2 went from a two-up two-down house to a three-bed with open plan downstairs living. Floor-to-ceiling corner windows and French doors in the kitchen/dining room allow light flood in at the rear.

The living room is through an open arch from the dining area.

As well as reworking the layout of the house, the couple put on a new roof and added external insulation to the older part of the property, which they re-slabbed and re-plastered “to bring it all up to date”, Laura says. The fruit of their labours is the excellent B2 energy rating, which will allow buyers to qualify for cheaper green mortgage rates. No 2 is now a fine, contemporary, energy-efficient property, on a site that no local authority would allocate to an individual home these days.

At about one third of an acre, the extension barely made a dint in it.

Laura and David made use of the outdoor space, adding some sheds, tarmac and fencing, and laid some of the land out in small paddocks. Selling agent John Hornibrook of Colbert & Co auctioneers reckons there’s scope for a commercial venture, if prospective buyers were so inclined.

The couple bought the house not because they are from the area, but because it was more or less halfway between Laura’s native Dungarvan and David’s family home in Cork City. A 30 minute car journey will get you to either. It’s conveniently close to East Cork’s beaches and Midleton town is about 10 minutes by car.

The terrace is a short stroll from Killeagh’s main street and is named in honour of Tim Daly, a local hero of yesteryear, who led a minor Fenian uprising in Cork in 1867. His exploits didn’t end well. After he and about 200 Fenians marched on the police barracks in Castlemartyr and called on its occupants to surrender, he was gunned down by some well-directed fire.

Laura and David have enjoyed life on the terrace, where No 4 was also bought and extended in recent years. To the rear is Killeagh Gardens, popular among families. There are schools at the bottom of the road.