Inside €750k Model Farm Road semi with clever back room makeover and luxury finishes

Renovated 1950s semi near Dennehy’s Cross offers modern kitchen, clever storage solutions and landscaped garden for €750,000

Subtle changes at 23 Woodlawn, off Cork's  Model Farm Road. Agent Michel Downey of  ERA Downey McCarthy guides the walk-in order home at €750,000. Pictures:  Ryan Lynch

Woodlawn, Model Farm Road
€750,000
Size	133 sq m (1,400 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	B2

THAT often problematic decision as to how to keep light in the back room of a standard semi-d when you extend out the back has been cleverly tackled, or circumvented, by the young family who took this 1950s era home — No 23 Woodlawn off the Model Farm Road — in hand only three years ago.

Inspired solutions: rear view of No 23 Woodlawn

Solution? They just gave up on it as a ‘reception’, and instead repurposed it as a large and very functional laundry/utility room, with capacious storage (pictured)

Clean up with sheer utility and laundry uses in former back room

tom right).

Then, they also hived a bit off where the former reception would have been accessed off the hallway, making it instead a step-into cloakroom, ideal for coats, shoes, buggies and the like, just shut the door, and out of sight.

Cloak and baggage

They needed it! Since buying the home and doing upgrades on it post-2022, their family has rapidly grown, so much so they have traded up, buying a substantial detached roughly 2,500sq ft five bed detached in Waterfall just west of Cork City and are on the move.

Bright  new kitchen at 23 Woodlawn

They’ve buying at Heatherfield from estate agent Michael Downey of ERA Downey McCarthy who’s now selling No 23 Woodlawn for them, launching it at €750,000 and getting first viewings only this Friday, expecting it to have an instant appeal to young buyers, professionals, and perhaps even traders down: in fact, its appeal would be even wider if it had more than the ‘standard’ three bedrooms upstairs.

But, the fact is not everyone today needs more than three bedrooms, not everyone wants traditional sized reception rooms as of yore, one fore, the other aft, and just about everyone wants storage, storage and more storage, which is where No 23 is going to score heavily.

Main bedroom with bay window

Its departing owners only bought No 23 back in 2022: the Price Register shows they paid €485,000 for it, and Google streetview still shows it as having had a modest single storey extension and a small garden room, each with pitched tiled roofs, likely to have been done some decades back.

They reconfigured, slightly enlarged and improved the previous extension, going for a membrane roof with a glazed section/rooflight above the island. They fitted a new kitchen, in dark blue with a good-sized island/seating and eating section, upgraded other glazing, removed the old garden room altogether and replaced it with a substantial paved patio, which has steps down to an enclosed lawn.

Now, there’s a far more open and airy flow, with a combined kitchen/living/family dining rear, with large sliding doors on the side to the west-aspected patio, all very crisp and contemporary, with three slender, vertical windows on the north-facing back wall, overlooking the lawn.

Pretty much all internal fittings have been changed and updated, including doors, with a glazed door between kitchen units and a vertical mounted rad in the kitchen (one of several tall, dark and handsome ones) opens to the irregularly-shaped laundry/utility, with waist height appliances, sink at the end and banks of storage units left and right, all very ergonomic and efficient and easy to keep neat and tidy.

There’s still a separate reception room, to the front with bay window, and the old chimney breast holds a TV screen above a wide, flame effect insert fire.

All flooring is new, as is the understairs bathroom ware and tiling, and above the main family bathroom has been redone, top to toe, with shower and separate freestanding bath.

The main (front) bedroom has a bay window and wall of mirrored robes, bed two behind is a bit smaller, and bed three, above the frond door/hall is small, a typical-enough bed three of these 1950s era semi-ds.

It’s understood that a family member is in the building trade and fed the good ideas to the couple after they bought No 23: they clearly were receptive and also knew what worked for them, until possibly being caught for space with arrival of more, recent smallies.

They didn’t skimp on finishes and ‘the look,’ and put effort and investment too into the side patio and garden, with large pavers, low limestone and capped walls around the outdoor seating/dining area off the kitchen, well screened off from the front garden/side drive, where there’s off-street parking and a small lawn.

Now guided at €750,000 and looking and feeling like very different home to how it presented just three year ago, No 23’s sale at €485,000 was referenced in these page when the D1 BER No 12 Woodlawn/Oakdene came to market with a €480,000 AMV, and which is now ‘sale agreed’ at well over it, likely up to €100k above, while the extended and upgraded No 20 Woodlawn came a year earlier, in July 2024 with a €700,000 AMV, and went ‘sale agreed’ for a price likely to be in the high €700,000, yet to appear on the Price Register.
VERDICT: A walk-in prospect in a top western city suburban address near Dennehy’s Cross, schools, colleges and hospitals, cleverly reworked.

Others looking at doing work to similar vintage three-bed semis have made back rooms which get sort of ‘land-locked’ and dark into toy rooms/TV dens, but many might do well to take a look at No 23’s floor plan and laundry/utility room use, if neat storage and high efficiency is their bag…