Factory-built Scandi-style €450k home is a model of comfort and taste

A timber deck and skillful landscaping add to the attractions of River View, outside Fermoy.

Fri, 04 Apr, 2025 - 07:00

Catherine Shanahan Pictures: Lyne Media

Fermoy, Co Cork
€450,000
Size	186 sq m (2,008 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4-6
Bathrooms	2
BER	B2

IF YOU want to see what a factory-built house looks like, look no further. The modular wall sections of River View, featured here, were manufactured in a factory in Lysekil, a small town on the Swedish west coast. They were then shipped to Ireland by the manufacturers, Scandinavian Homes, whereupon they were re-assembled on site by the Irish arm of the Swedish firm.

The Irish lads built the foundation on site and then erected the delivered house. As energy efficiency is a big deal for Lars and Linda Pettersson, the Swedish couple that founded Scandinavian Homes, it comes with high levels of insulation.

More than 400 of these homes have been built in Ireland since the Pettersson’s started their company in 1991.

Irish involvement has been there almost from the get-go via a base in Moycullen, Co Galway. The company website says Swedish passive house building methods and traditions play “a large role” in the construction process. The price quoted for a finished 100sq m passive house is around €225,000. The price includes the completed foundation and shell, and kit tailored to the customer, “but which usually includes” windows and doors (factory installed), outside rendering and rain gutters, partitions and inner doors, wooden floors and underfloor heating, and fitted bathrooms.

The family that commissioned River View, their own Scandinavian home in Bartlemy, outside Fermoy, went for a bigger square footage of 2,000 sq ft.

The size can accommodate six bedrooms (one on the ground floor is ideal for guests, another is used as an art studio) as well as a very large open-plan kitchen/dining/living room and two bathrooms.

A particularly useful feature is the walk-in pantry, with plenty of food storage.

The house was assembled on site in 2009 and the owners, a family from the Czech Republic, lived there for the next half dozen years. In 2015, they returned to their homeland and their Nordic-design house went on the market, when Britain-based Paul and Ann Mason bought it.

“We had been living in London and we were planning to move to Ireland when I retired, but then a job opportunity came up,” says Paul.

“We did a lot of online searching and this house was on our list.”

Initially, they’d been keen on West Cork as a destination, but as they moved while Paul was still working, the commute to his new job in Ovens would have been too great. A drive from Bartlemy to Dell EMC was far more do-able at around 40 minutes.

“It only takes eight minutes to get to the M8 motorway, so it was a good location for us,” Paul says.

While the location was key in their choice of home, they also loved its energy efficiency.

“If you consider that it was built in 2009, it was well ahead of the standards of house building at the time.

“It’s a super-insulated, super warm home and the energy costs aren’t that high.”

Triple glazing, a woodburning stove with back boiler, and a solar panel hot water system contribute to the B2 rating.

The degree of comfort at River View is complimented by how attractive its interiors are. Paul likes to dabble in artwork — one of the bedrooms has been adapted to an art studio — and the fruits of his efforts decorate the walls.

Household paint choices add further pops of colour. The main daytime living accommodation, the open-plan kitchen/dining/living room, is a glorious combo of colour, texture and fabric.

Outdoors at River View is pretty impressive too. Paul’s artistic eye turned a “fairly basic” 0.8 acre site into a really attractive garden, with the bulk of the planting surrounding a south-facing timber deck.

The deck is well-sheltered from winds by perspex panels, installed by the Masons, which they intend to leave for the next owners. The couple installed electric gates too, at the bottom of the drive.

Indoors, they installed electric blinds on the downstairs windows.

Paul describes River View as “a low maintenance house”.

“It’s very peaceful here and we have beautiful views, so I am really going to miss the location and the friends we made here,” Paul says.

“But the house is too big for just two of us, so we are downsizing.” The move this time is to Co Monaghan, where Ann is from.

River View, in an area known locally as Bluebell, is on the market with Adrianna Hegarty of Hegarty Properties with a guide price of €450,000.

She reckons it will appeal to a range of buyers, including well-heeled first-timers, upsizers looking to get out of housing estates to the countryside, and downsizers

“It’s a turnkey, energy efficient home on a generous 0.8 acre site, close to the M8 and just 10 minutes from Fermoy and 10 minutes from Midleton,” says Ms Hegarty.