Adding a room for all seasons transforms €445,000 Glenville cottage

FOR many homeowners, space is the final frontier, not in the sense of boldly going where no-one has gone before, more along the lines of “how do I bolster the space at my no-longer-big-enough home?” 

How we go about achieving this can make or break a house, but it helps if the homeowner has the kind of professional background that understands (a) how to assess an existing space; (b) how to go about extending it; and (c) how to turn a design brief into a reality.

In the case of 157 sq m Ardrow Cottage in Glenville, featured here, the man of the house had the know-how, having trained as an architectural technologist, before honing his craft through working with architectural firms in Cork City for the past 40 years.

Ardrow Cottage, when he and his wife bought it, was a standard bungalow, built in the late 1990s. They came across it after being refused planning permission, when they applied to build a new home on land nearer Glenville village, owned by his wife’s family. They were relocating from Maryborough Hill in Cork City.

“We saw this house was up for sale. We looked at it on a Monday and came back the following Friday. We put in an offer and it all happened pretty quickly,” the owner says.

That was 2002.

 Over the next number of years, they made various decorative changes, such as refurbishing the living room and installing solid-wood Junckers flooring in living room and hallway, but the really transformative work, the major design change, took place in 2010/2011 when they added a sunroom.

“We wanted better space, it was a family home and the family had grown, so we set about extending the house,” the owner says.

They were guided by the stunning views, down towards the Bride Valley (the River Bride is a tributary of the mighty Blackwater).

“The land in front of us is a special area of conservation, so no-one can build there. Ardarou Wood, which the River Bride runs through, is five minutes away, and there are lovely woodland walks,” says the owner.

There was no issue with space when they set about extending, as their home is on 0.75 acres. There was no issue around design either, as the owner could do it himself. A builder did the construction work and the owners did the fit-out. 

The end result is a tremendous boon: A sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows on all four walls and an overhead skylight, so that it’s light-filled at all times, but also cosy in the winter months, thanks to a free-standing wood-burner.

To the rear of the extension, a door opens onto a large walled-in limestone patio, tucked into the right angle between the original home and the new wing. 

Here, a stepped, slate-capped wall runs under a tiered rockery where the central feature is a natural waterfall. 

Plant choice has been carefully curated, with acers, hostas and other native species. One of those acers is beautifully framed by a large picture window in the sunroom.

 This patio gets sunlight in the afternoon and evening. A second, smaller patio off the kitchen/breakfast room, gets it in the morning.

 The ktichen/breakfast room were separate, until the owners knocked a wall.

French doors open from the breakfast area onto the smaller patio. Light floods through these doors and also through an arch that frames the short, glazed link corridor connecting the original bungalow to the extension.

It makes sense that the sunroom has become the most-used room in the house. Not only is it the biggest (7.52m × 4.43m), with space for dining and a lounge, it also has the best light and views. 

Because it opens onto a patio and also back into the kitchen/breakfast room, it’s a great open-plan space for entertaining.

The garden has been as well-tended to as the house, where the main bathroom was recently refurbished and a bath taken out and replaced with a double shower.

Outdoors, a front-of-house gravel bed, planted with low-maintenance shrubs, is another recent improvement. At the moment, the owner is experimenting with the lawn in an effort to promote biodiversity. He’s mowing tight closer to the house, but letting the grass grow further back, cutting pathways through it. A new owner might fancy the idea of a wildflower meadow, he says. Or they could want a perfect football pitch for the kids.

Kids can avail of a brand-new primary school in Glenville village, which is a five-minute walk away, “with a footpath all the way” says the owner. There’s a floodlit all-weather pitch in the village too and buses pass through to take secondary school kids to Carrignavar (12 minutes) and Fermoy (20 minutes). Travelling by car will get you to Blackpool or Ballyvolane, on the outskirts of Cork City, in about 20 minutes. The Cork/Dublin M8 motorway can be accessed from Watergrasshill, which is less than a 10-minute drive away.

Auctioneer Joe Organ is selling four-bed Ardrow Cottage, as the owners are relocating to the man-of-the-house’s native Rosscarberry. Mr Organ says it’s “a stunning property, full of character and warmth, on a beautifully landscaped site, with panoramic views.

The guide price is €445,000 and the BER is C3.

VERDICT: A lovely family home, bolstered considerably by the addition of a stunning sunroom and landscaped patio areas.