A cheap Irish home is still cheap (€285k) despite a stellar makeover

Irish Examiner

13 hours ago

ANDREW Ryan did such a top job of transforming a cheap Irish home into a more valuable, yet still very affordable property, that he ended up showcasing his work on Cheap Irish Homes.
'I thought I was going to be in a movie, the crew was here so long,' he laughs, recalling how the team behind the hit TV series spent an entire day filming at No 25 Roches Row, in the port town of Cobh.
An engineer by profession, he had sent the show's producers 'before' and 'after' photos, after a call-out for people to tell their own bargain-home story in Series 3.
"Before"
"After" at 25 Roches Row, Cobh
'To me, saving old homes is very important, and No 25 Roches Row is more than 200 years old,' he says.
'I hate seeing houses fall into wrack and ruin. All it takes is someone who cares to make it a home. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a home for you.'
Andrew bought the house in 2019 from auctioneer Johanna Murphy, who is now selling it on his behalf.
'I paid €145,000 for it at the time. It had been a long-term rental and I knew it needed work, but I hadn't anticipated the level of fixing-up required. It was a crock.'
Not looking good when Andrew bought it
Andrew had a couple of things in his favour: His 'engineer's head', a handy dad and previous experience restoring an old building. Himself and his brother own The Sardinian, a seven-bedroom period guesthouse on Cobh's Harbour Hill, and he had done renovation work on it — 'so I knew what I was getting into', he says.
One of his first tasks was to replace the back wall, which was little more than a flimsy partition. He replaced it with a block wall. A rear roof was replaced. A stone cliff behind the house that was seeping water had to be chemically treated. All the drains had to be replaced.
A cliff wall to the rear had to be chemically treated
'I had the skillset, but we would have got advice too. It's worth getting advice if you want to do it right, although I still made plenty of mistakes along the way,' Andrew says.
He spent a year getting the house to a level he considered habitable. He did it for €25,000.
'I would have put more into it over the past few years, but that's what it took to make it habitable. €25,000. That's peanuts, in the grand scheme of [property] things,' he says.
He ended up doing things that didn't need re-doing 'but I was sort of down a rabbit hole at that point, so I ended up re-doing the electrics, even though they didn't need re-doing'.
His dad, Damian, a fitter/turner by trade, was a big help.
'He did the cast iron railings (on the front windows). I gave him my sketches and he did the rest.' Damian also painted the sunflower yellow staircase, which works a treat with the dapple grey hall and stair panelling. Is he about to spawn a new interiors trend?
New colour pairing could be a winning trend?
'I was on a work weekend in Germany and Dad rang me and said: 'The paint for the staircase is yellow. Very yellow.'
'I said 'yes, it will work'.'
For sure, the yellow-grey pairing is a winning combination, a flamboyant twist in a house packed to the rafters with playful touches, from a series of shoemaker's lasts converted into a quirky coat stand, to the buttermilk, ceramic circular sink in the bathroom ('I had a sink for two years and no cabinet stand to put it on,' Andrew says) to an extensive collection of musical instruments.
Buttermilk sink
Strings to his bow
A classically trained violinist with a good grounding also in Irish traditional music, Andrew has, literally, many strings to his bows.
'I play the violin and the mandolin. I give the banjo a go. I have an accordion that belongs to my grandmother and I have a piano, which I think every home should have,' he says.
A flea market enthusiast (Mother Jones, on York St, off MacCurtain St in Cork city, is a favoured haunt) and self-professed collector of bric-a-brac and vintage bits, Andrew says he has a vision in his head of what he wants and he's prepared to wait to find it.
Star Wars Collector's items
Some of the vintage bric a brac at No 25
His patience is a virtue that's paid off, as is his willingness to put in the hard yards.
'Laying the herring bone floor in the living room was a steep learning curve. I'd fitted floors for years with my dad, but the herring bone was a whole different experience. It took us two-and-a-half weeks, and the volume of work was enormous,' he says.
The orange chair was salvaged from CJM Furniture on Centre Park Road
The floor is oak, which set Andrew on a committed oak trajectory: the wall panelling is capped with oak, light switches are made of oak, doors are oak.
The house, 'a labour of love', eschews clean lines and embraces quirkiness and individuality.
When the plasterer pointed to a dip in one of the walls and offered to straighten it out, Andrew said no.
All of the wall panelling had to be cut by hand to make it fit.
'I was working to a budget, so I had to be clever,' he says. His kitchen, with its dijon yellow subway tiles, came ex-display from the Aga store at a knockdown price of €400, via CJM Furniture, on Centre Park Road.
€400 kitchen
'There were times when I ran out of money or when I got things wrong. But if you make mistakes, it's not the end of the world.
'You pick the wrong paint colour – so what, it's only paint. It's about not being afraid to try things,' he says.
Getting the house to habitable stage was a year-long slog. 'Working on it was one thing, living in it is a whole different ballgame,' he says.
It took a while to get a handle on the best use of space in the 90 sq m home. One of three bedrooms was adapted to a home office.
Home office
Another became a dressing room for his partner, Becky.
Dressing room
Furniture and colour schemes changed. Decor evolved.
Half a dozen years in, Andrew's life has moved forward (he was single when he bought the house) and he's ready to leave his starter home behind.
'It was really good to me and it's hard for me to sell it, but I am moving on to a new project, to a bigger house in Norwood. It's an old house too, but there's more space.
'When I bought the house on Roches Row, it was always my intention to scale up, so that is what I am doing now.'
The absence of a garden at Roches Row was not something that bothered him when he bought it. As the terrace faces south, people pull deckchairs out in the summer months, and there's plenty back-and-forth between the neighbours. 'It's a real community,' Andrew says.
His up-for-sale cheap Irish home comes to market looking more fetching now than at any time in its 200-year history, at the affordable first-time-buyer price of €285,000.
Johanna Murphy of Johanna Murphy & Sons says first-time-buyers are loving it. Investors are likely to cast an eye too, given the low maintenance, turnkey quality of the property, which will attract holiday makers for the same reasons.
'It would be nice to see a young couple getting it,' Ms Murphy says, adding that it's a home 'full of character and nooks and crannies'.
Location-wise, it's high up above the harbour near Cathedral Place, embedded in the zig-zag of terraces that run along Cobh's steep hills. Views of the harbour are from upstairs. For those commuting for work to Cork city, the train station is less than a 15 minute walk away.
VERDICT: Terrific starter home. Shows what can be achieved with hard work and creativity.