Small screen cameo for good-looking €725,000 Ovens home

Knockane, Ovens, Co Cork.

Location: Ovens, Co Cork
€725,000
Size	197sq m (2,120sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	A1

Windows, really, are the defining feature of this crisp Ovens home in Knockane. Bright as a summer morning and extended with a sure hand, the stylish house has been thoroughly reworked from a classic 1980s bungalow to the beacon of light that it is today.

The property, in orchard country — the musical-sounding Mealagulla Orchard is just down the road — has been through two phases of renovation. The first was 2016-2017, before the couple moved in. They blew out the back wall and pushed the house out, deeper into the broad site, and when you walk in, it’s as bright and airy as you can get. Contributing to this sense of opennessare two extra-large roof lights, a full-height side window, and wide, fully-glazed patio doors that, despite their size, lift and slide open seamlessly onto the Burma Blue limestone patio in the south-west-facing rear garden.

The extension creates a great sense of space and ‘pulls’ the garden in, so that the kitchen — with stylish Glenline cabinetry — feels even bigger. The room opens inwards to a lounge area, too, with an in-built media unit, understairs storage and a truly unique picture window. A full-height box bay, it was designed to replace a roller shutter garage door after the garage made way for a lounge.

A stairs that runs above the lounge leads to an overhead playroom/gym in regular use by the children and a great bolthole when they have friends over.

After so comprehensively re-ordering the main living space, the couple saved for a few years, before moving onto phase two, which involved repositioning the front door, so that visitors would no longer have to “traipse past the bedrooms”, the owner says.

A new hall was created, dividing a home office/downstairs playroom from a family room that fans of reality TV show Googlebox might recognise. Externally, warm cedar cladding was added and Kilkenny limestone gives a nice finish around the base and front steps.

Bedrooms are at the far end of the 197sq m house, where windows once again are the defining feature, including a tall picture window with a window seat overlooking the back garden, and a wide picture window in the main bedroom that perfectly frames a tree.

The vendor says the previous owner had planted “a lot of nice trees, and we just picked up on what he had done”, but she’s possibly being modest, given how bountiful the 0.3a garden looks.

Norma Healy, of Sherry FitzGerald, is selling the stylish four-bed in the pretty setting of Knockane, and she says it’s a “superb blend of modern design, comfort, and energy efficiency”. The BER is an A1, with 14 solar panels and triple-glazed windows on the north-facing house front, as well as a heat pump all feeding into the excellent rating.

The price for this attractive home is €725k

VERDICT: Well-judged renovations and window placement have created a superbly light-filled family home. Turnkey opportunity in a countryside setting, yet within a 25-minute drive of Cork city. Buses to local schools are available nearby.