TOM’S Cottage is so crisply presented that it’s hard to believe the builder had to use a slash hook to find it when it first came to market.
“It was advertised as a site for sale which I think turned people off, but my foreman told me there was a house there. I had to get a slash hook to find it, and after we bought it, it took two months to clear out the site,” says builder Seán Healy of Lauragh Construction, a Kerry company that specialises in home and commercial renovations and new build projects.
The cottage, 1km outside the village of Ballyvourney, had seen better days when Seán bought it, but he already had a strong template, having renovated and restored similar customary properties in Kenmare the previous year.
“We have a style when we are renovating these kinds of properties. The problem is, we can’t get enough of them,” he says. Before Tom’s Cottage, he renovated Maura’s Cottage, a lookalike property in Garranes, Kenmare, and also a neighbouring home called John-Joe’s Cottage. The houses are named in honour of previous owners.
Among the types of properties Lauragh Construction likes to renovate are one-and-a-half or two-storey traditional farmhouses, which thay gut and rebuild as models of energy efficiency, well-lit and superbly insulated. But even wiht modern comforts, they still retain their rural charm.As an example, Tom’s Cottage was fitted with new triple-glazed windows that mirror the originals. “They’re exactly the same size because I wanted to retain the look,” Seán says.
The house exterior was covered in a dull gray plaster, which took “days and days to hack off”. A lean-to kitchen was knocked and replaced with a lofty rear extension housing a new open-plan kitchen/dining/living room with a vaulted ceiling.
Light streams in through double sliding doors and an overhead Velux. All of the glazing is by Munster Joinery.
“It’s all very high spec,it had to be to get the A2 energy rating,” says Seán,who adds that the cottage has “full air tightness throughout”.
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