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Do you see that building there now? That's my new gaff. So, having spent the last few years bottom trawling the real estate market for the dirtiest dive I could renovate, I finally found a place I can call home.
Eoin Reardon buys and renovates an old shop residence in West Cork, blending workspace and living quarters.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Old buildings can be repurposed creatively to combine work and living spaces.
- Restoration projects require patience and tackling issues like damp and structural damage.
- Maintaining traditional architectural features preserves the character of historic buildings.
- Community and local history enrich the renovation experience.
- Sharing the renovation journey builds engagement and support from viewers.
What the video covers
- Eoin Reardon purchases a derelict old shop with living quarters above in the twin villages of Enniskean and Ballineen, County Cork.
- The property includes a commercial ground floor, residential first floor, garden, yard, shed, and outbuildings on a third of an acre.
- Eoin plans to restore the traditional shop front with period features like sash windows and lime mortar.
- The ground floor will serve as his woodworking workshop and space for hosting workshops and filming videos.
- The upstairs will be used as living quarters and guest accommodation, merging his work and personal life.
- The building requires extensive renovation due to damp, mold, rotten stairs, and missing original shop fixtures.
- Eoin shares a detailed tour of the property, highlighting challenges like moisture damage and the need for restoration.
- He discusses the history of the building and his vision for its future use and restoration.
- The garden space is small but planned for rewilding and vegetable growing.
- Eoin encourages viewers to support his content on Patreon if they enjoy his work.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the new property
- 01:05Overview of the property and purchase story
- 01:57Initial viewing and offer process
- 02:44Receiving the keys and first impressions
- 03:30Tour of the shop/workspace area
- 04:24Condition and potential of the commercial space
- 05:14Exploring the residential spaces and moisture issues
- 06:12Upstairs layout and room conditions
- 08:03Additional rooms and storage areas
- 09:49Garden and outbuildings overview
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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An old shop residence in the twin villages of Enniskean and Ballineen in the west of my own county Cork. It might not look like much just yet, but just give me a year or two and I'll have her
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right as rain. Just because the world has moved on from the day of the village grocer, it doesn't mean we should rectify its beauty. The plan for this place is to restore the traditional shop front, sash windows, lime mortar, the full shebang.
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I'll use the commercial space on the ground floor as my workspace to host workshops and film videos and use the first floor as living quarters and guest accommodation, permanently dissolving the ever-fading line between my work life and personal life once and for all.
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And I haven't even mentioned the garden, yard, shed, or outbuildings yet, but if you want to get the complete rundown on them, well, I guess you'll just have to watch the full video.
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So, I bought a house. Well, it's not really a house. It's more of an old shop with a yard out the back and a garden behind the yard and a house above the shop, all on a third of an acre. So, for
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the last number of years, I was on the lookout for a derelict old cottage to restore. I did come close a number of times. There was one cottage up in Mayo.
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I went sale agreed upon, but I soon found that there was a land dispute there, so I had to give that one up. I had a number of other close maybes and the search brought me to beautiful and
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remote places where I met some very lovely people, but in the end, I just couldn't find any property up for sale that was right for me or that didn't have a bunch of other legal complications that made buying not
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worthwhile. But, during a discussion with my father one day, this particular property came up in conversation and we talked about how it might actually be a decent fit for where I wanted to take my work at the moment. More on that later,
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but either way, I rang up the real estate agent and we headed down last winter for a look around. The property had been up on the market for a year and a half, and the real estate agent said
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there hadn't been much interest in the place, which seemed to be the opposite of the case with any of the cottages I went to look at. So, I mulled over it for a few days and eventually decided to
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put in an offer, and a week later, I got a phone call off the agent saying the offer had been accepted. That was last December. Now, I tried not to get too excited right away. I had gone sale
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agreed before and ended up disappointed. So, we said we'd hold out and see how this played out, and six months later where are they now?
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[clears throat] I finally got the keys. So, I was holding off on announcing it or saying it to too many people because, you know, you kind of make a fool of yourself if you say, "Oh, yeah, I'm getting
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that place there now," and it doesn't happen. But, here we are at long last. So, as you can see from the footage, this place requires a lot of work before I can begin living and
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working out of here. But, either way, I'm going to give you guys a quick tour of the place as it stands right now, just so I can share with you guys my thoughts as to how I want to shape this
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place going forward. So, here we are in the village of Ballineen. That there, those two doors, are the entrances to the property. So, we'll kick our way in there now. The doors are a bit stiff at the moment, so we'll just give them a
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bit of a donkey kick and hopefully they'll open for us. And we're in.
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So, once we step inside, we're making our way into what I'm told used to be a little grocer. So, at the moment, the place is more or less empty.
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I have started to move down a small few bits from the workshop that I rent just to get them out of there and into here.
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So, there's a few chairs and workbenches and what have you lying about. But, the long-term plan for this space is to have my workshop here, the workshop where I will be filming all of my woodworking content going forward, and hopefully at
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some point where I'll be able to bring students in so that we can do workshops out of here. So, that's the plan for this particular room. I've heard from some of the neighbors that I got talking to that up until a few years
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ago, this place had its original shop. So, we're talking all the shelves, the drawers, the countertop, and everything that must have been here for a very long time. So, it's a real shame that that was stripped, you know, it's lost a
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good portion of its original fabric with that removal. So, that's quite upsetting, but on the other hand, it's a blank canvas.
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You know, it's a space that I can do what I want with now, I suppose. I'm not beholden to the original layout, which would have been nice to have, but there's certainly a lot to be said
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for being able to do it how I want. So, that's something worth mentioning. If we head further into the back now, I'll show you guys what used to be the kitchen. So, as we leave the shop and head into the kitchen, we move
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from what was the commercial part of the property to the residential. This room also has the main entrance, which is this side door here, and it's how I've been getting into the house since I've got it. At the moment, I'm using it to
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store a few of my chairs and a settle and a fridge just to kind of keep them dry while I'm moving in here.
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Leaving the kitchen then, we can make our way into what I assume was the living room.
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It's through this passageway here that the amount of moisture getting into the house is most obvious with all these big lumps of mold here and the fact that you could probably stick a screwdriver straight through that wooden panel.
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This is probably one of the most damp and moist rooms in the house at the moment, but still I love it. You've got these beautiful moldings all along the ceiling here, lovely plaster work in the center, and also you've got this lovely
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fireplace. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do with this room, but I'm fairly sure that I won't be using it as a living room because like I mentioned, downstairs is going to be for work, but upstairs is where I'm going to be
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living. It's very echoey. I'm sure you can probably hear the audio. I filmed the intro right here where the camera is.
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The living room also has a very nice sash window. The front ones have been replaced with PVC, but the ones out the back are still the beautiful originals by the looks of things. So, I've been opening them all up anyway, trying to air the
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place out a small bit. So, speaking of the upstairs, why don't we head back into the kitchen and I'll show you guys what that looks like. Now, the second and the third steps have pretty much completely rotten away, but if we step
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all the way onto step number four, we can make our way upstairs. So, this is the upstairs. It's pretty big. Originally, I think this was two separate buildings and at some point they broke through the partitioning wall here
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and just turned it into one big 4 and a half thousand square foot building. So, I'm going to pull up my phone here and show you guys what it looks like up here. So, we've come up the stairs there
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and arrived at this kind of hallway to nowhere. That's just a window that views out onto the street, but there's a number of bedrooms here. So, this is what I assume was the master bedroom because it's got the nicest fireplace of
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all the rooms. So, it's quite a nice unit there. A lot of damp and mold coming in as you guys can see here.
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So, it's just an endless pile of work really, isn't it? But the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
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So, this is another little bedroom. It's got a sash window that is painted such that it can't open anymore. So, hopefully, we'll be able to maintain and put most of those back into working order.
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If we come back here, we've got another very, very damp bedroom. There is a chimney directly above this that I reckon is the source of all my problems.
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Like this is totally banjaxed all together and there's a load of moisture coming through there.
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Um so at least I think I know where the problem is coming from. But moving on, we've got the most unusual bathroom setup I've ever seen in my life. So we've got this double door thing going on here.
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Big long corridor down to the jacks. And then if we come into this room, we've got a really big amount of space, a bathtub, the sink, another sash window, and a pot to piss in.
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So it stinks in here. Uh a lot of mold and damp and what have you.
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This is the wall, like I mentioned, that the chimney is on top of. So wetness is getting in there and causing havoc. So we have to see what we can do about that. I'm assuming that chimney will have to go.
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But if we move on, go into this room here, another bedroom. Then we continue. This last bedroom's pretty cool because it's got a secret dungeon that I'm probably going to get rid of because there's almost no honest and pure reasons to have a secret
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dungeon, but I'll show you guys what it looks like anyway. We can come into our wardrobe here and you'll notice that the back isn't really the back. So we can just push away in there and then Oh my god.
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What is this place? Boarded off windows, dingy lights, mysterious buckets. Let's get out of here. So [snorts] we can head back down the stairs. There's two sets of stairs. This one isn't all rotted, which is great.
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Once we make our way down to the bottom of this flight of stairs, we're in the last room of the house I've got to show you guys. So what have we got going on here? We've got a Belfast sink, an old
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stove, two wheelie bins, a photo of all the lads on the wall, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. We can make our way to the back of the room here and this is the exit out onto the yard, which I'm
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going to show you guys right now. So first off the bat, we've got this kind of unusual building. I'm not really sure what it was for, but I do like all those star shapes cut into the wood up there.
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Next, we've got the outdoor toilets. Those of you with weak stomachs, look away now.
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So, come in here. There we go. Look at that. That's what we're contending with.
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I wonder can I get that back working again? There we go. That ventilation isn't doing much work at the moment. Leave me, lads. Woo.
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Back to fresh-ish air. So, in this building then, we've got old water tank, doesn't work.
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Uh weighing scales that used to be part of the shop, I'd imagine. The real estate asked me The real estate agent asked me if I wanted to hang on to these. I said I would.
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So, there's a bunch of small outbuildings I need to show you guys. So, we've got this one here.
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Storage. Nice vice there for us. And then, this one has a heap of crap that probably needs to end up in a skip.
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Also, looking at the roof, the entirety of it probably needs to come down and be redone.
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So, no shortage of labor here for me, lads. If we head up this flight of stairs, we'll arrive at a door and we'll go no further for fear the floor would fall out from under us.
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But, we've just got any amount of skip fodder here. Before I proceed any further with the tour of the yard, check out these beautiful wrought iron gates.
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I love a good old wrought iron gates and to have a set leading me into my very own yard is something I'm very happy about.
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They probably need a small bit of work or at the very least a new lick of paint, but uh I know a few people who like to deal in wrought iron gate restoration.
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So, there'll be no fear of me. Come on away in. One of the many great things about this place is the gigantic shed in the backyard here. So, I'll uh pull up the phone again and show you guys what
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that looks like from within. In the front bay here, we've got the Corrib Neagh Vogue parked up.
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A few workbenches I've moved down from the workshop I rent, and also a pile of rotten timber. So, I don't think there's anything in there that could be saved. That'll probably all end up as firewood.
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A few holes in the roof, a few uh pigeons living in here. So, I'm going to tackle the house first, but someday we'll get around to the shed and we'll either restore it or replace it with a timber frame.
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This is the building we didn't go upstairs on because the floors are rotten, but the downstairs units are relatively dry when it's not raining.
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We've got our chopping blocks, our workbench, a few bits and bobs in here, nothing in there.
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Another beautiful little wrought iron gate. There used to be farm animals kept here. There's no land with the place, but they would have walked them out that gate, down the village, to graze in the fields. Um but that's obviously long
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ago. I don't think anybody does that anymore, really. In this second bay back here, we have got uh working lights, which I'm sure. Here it is.
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Never mind. We've got a pile of basically. Loads of tiles, which is great because at some point um we're going to have to redo the roof. So, there's tons of spare roofing tiles.
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Mystery bags up here. Who knows what's in them? We'll find out at time. Mystery cage.
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Mystery pallet, mystery box, and more doors. So, these are solid pine doors. So, hopefully we can put them back to use here.
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All right, let's go check out the third and final bay. Oh, look, we've got the um the head of a swan here.
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We might put a handle on that at some point. Actually, I'm not sure what's in here.
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Ah lovely. A foul sofa and a skip farrow, unfortunately. Come and look through here.
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A wood shed. Let's go to this third bay here. So, we can take out this pin, pull open this thing, and heave the door open.
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And we've got pigeons. Get out. All right, we've got some straw bales there rotting away into the floor.
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And that's more or less it. There we go. So, I'll probably just use this to pertaining to the rest building.
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But, for now, we lock her up and show you guys what the garden looks like.
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So, the garden isn't much to behold at the minute. We can just open this gate here and step into the wilderness.
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So, it's it's not a very big garden, but uh there'll definitely be be a bit of scope for growing vegetables and what have you down the line. The moment we're doing a bit of rewilding. You can see there
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we've got wildflowers and butterflies. This here is a big chestnut tree, uh a horse chestnut. I'm unsure what to do with this. I love trees.
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Um I don't like non-native trees, though, but this fella, I think I think I'm coming around to him.
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Now, here's a tree we definitely can't cut down. The hawthorn, the fairy tree. So, we have to work around him, or we'll be cursed, and I'll have no good luck ever again.
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I'm not exactly sure where the property line runs to, but I think it's somewhere over with all them trees over there. So, not exactly a huge garden, but by all means not a small garden, either. This will be the very last thing I tackle
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anyway. I've got uh got a lot of items far higher up on the priority list to be dealing with at the moment.
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But, let's head back to the yard real quick and I'll tell you guys right now what my current plans for the place are or my plans as to how I'm going to get this place workable, livable again.
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So, obviously, there's a lot of work to be done and it's hard to know exactly where to begin. What I do know is that at the moment this house is probably not fit for habitation. There's a lot of
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fungus and mold growing and I could probably give myself all sorts of illnesses if I try sleeping there for the time being. So, the plan isn't to start with the house, it's to start with one of the outbuildings. To the left of
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me here, there are a row of kind of smaller farm buildings that I've just shown you guys. I'm going to clear them out and I'm going to do one of those up, kind of build myself, I suppose, a bit
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of a hovel. It'd be a nice hovel, though, like a cabin, almost, you could say. It'll have a bed, a little kitchenette in it, a stove, hopefully, to keep me warm as I'm working through our winter. So, that'll be the first thing I'm going to
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tackle and once that's done, I'll have accommodation on site so that it'll make it easier for me to work on the rest of the place cuz I'm living about half an hour away at the moment at my folks'
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place. So, it'll save me an hour of commute every day if I can just be on site and I just like being on site, as well. I'm 25. I don't want to be living with my folks anymore. So, that's the
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plan. So, obviously, this is a huge project that is going to more or less occupy my life for the next couple of years, but I'm very excited, maybe foolishly so, to be at the start of this big adventure. Uh but, stay tuned. I'm
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going to be sharing the progress here online as I go. Uh if you'd like to support the project, please do subscribe and engage. Or if you can afford to do so, become a Patreon member. There's no uh exclusive content. I want it to be
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freely available to everybody. But if you enjoy the um content I create and you derive entertainment from us um and you are in a financial position where you can, please do consider supporting on Patreon. Um yeah.
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Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll catch you in the next one. Sláinte mhath all.
Topics:Eoin Reardonold shop renovationworkshop restorationwoodworking studiohistoric building restorationCork Irelandsash windowslime mortarDIY renovationproperty renovation
