A pristine 'modern country' style home for a new family

The home is for sale at €440,000

Riverview Lodge, Ballyvolane

Ballyvolane, Cork City
€440,000
Size	Size: 145 sq m (1550 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	C1

The owners of Riverview Lodge, Michael and Avril Murphy, built this one-off family home for their five children on land owned by a previous generation of the family, but have opted to go again on a new project, the renovation of a 150-year-old farmhouse that was owned by Avril’s grandmother.

After the painstaking, three-year long overhaul of the farmhouse, Michael and Avril are ready to move and so are selling Riverview Lodge, in a niche section of Riverview estate, called Riverview Gardens, in Ballyvolane.

Michael’s father was well-known home builder (and Cork stone quarry owner) Tony Murphy, of decades-long development and delivery in suburban Cork spots from Douglas to Ballyvolane, including Riverview, where the family had lived for many years.

Around 2000, Michael got one of the better sites for this 145 sq m/1,550 sq ft, five-bed dormer home, Riverview Lodge.

“We’d never have moved, only my grandmother’s home was coming up for sale at Rathcooney; it’s a 150-year-old farmhouse and we decided to keep it in the family and to do it up,” says Avril Murphy.

But it was a bigger chunk of work, time, and money than they’d envisaged.

“We thought we might get away with things like changing carpets, but by the time we opened it up a bit, we ended up with a mini-digger inside digging out the floors,” Avril says. The decision to ‘do it right’ with appropriate build materials for a 19th century farm home — like lime render to replace hard cement applied 20 or 30 years ago and which had to be replaced — all added to the work and the cost, as did the difficulty in getting skilled tradespeople who were sympathetic to the project. It continued for three years of very low-key Grand Designs, or Great House Revival domestic dramas and unexpected surprises, she agrees.

But, it’s done now, and the Murphy family has already moved the few miles out to more rural Rathcooney, and hence the arrival of Riverview Lodge to market, the family having decided to sell rather than to rent it out.

Clearly well-built, with no surprises under its 25-year-old skin and thriving beard of ivy on some exterior walls, Riverview Lodge is guided at €440,000 by estate agent Jeremy Murphy, who expects lots of trade-up family buyer interest, given its charm and character, convenience, and price point.

Riverview Gardens’ quiet, neighbourly cul-de-sac setting, inside at the back of Riverview Estate, is a bonus, with near proximity of the North Ring Rd, bus service, shops like Dunnes, and long-established amenities on the doorstep, while other key attractions include a generous site with good mature side and back gardens, lots of parking for a number of cars, patio, C1 BER, new heating boiler, and shower.

A dormer with three roof peak windows, it has three ground-floor bedrooms, one of them en suite, and two first-floor dormer rooms, with one of them also en suite, thus with four bathrooms.

Avril admits to being quite a traditionalist in terms of décor, so the ‘modern country’ kitchen with hand-painted units has a lovely, deep, ceramic sink, and the main front reception room has an impressive, period-style open black fireplace, with mirrored wall sections neatly added either side of the chimney breast. Glazed double doors open from this reception/family room to the kitchen/dining room behind.

For families looking for more living space, a quiet den, home office or television room, one of the ground-floor bedrooms could easily be co-opted.

Having been a much-loved home to five children, two of whom are still in school, Rivereview Lodge is comfortably finished, with hardwood stairs handrail with turns and carpet, and with feature brass stair rods. The facing stair wall has dado/panelling, while the entry point is via a set of painted teak double-front doors with small, feature arched windows, and the hall floor is hardwood, with solid timber floors also in the kitchen and living room.

VERDICT: The already departed vendors clearly had energy for one family-linked build project on a period-era, 150-year-old farmhouse, but whoever buys here can do as little as they like, with no surprises in store.