So the next step is doors and windows.   A local gentleman, Tim, gave a great quote, less than the large showroom store, for the ordering of the windows and installation.   The house has 10 windows and 3 exterior doors.  He had some great ideas and brought several catalogs for me to read and choose doors and windows.  

I picked a dark woodgrain much to everyone’s dismay.  Windows are apparently supposed to be white.  But I thought the wood finish would look gorgeous with all the stone that will be on the house….  so we went with it and once they were in, everyone loved them. 

I knew I had the right person for the job when he solved the French door dilemma.  I had my heart set on French doors for the front of the house that will open to a covered patio area.    The house is up on a hill and it is literally always windy up there. 

EVERYONE including the big window showroom said “don’t do it,”  and that they would not install them, due to the certainty that the wind will catch the open door(s) and break them.  They tried to convince me to get a big sliding door instead.    When I asked Tim, about this, he said, and I quote,  “You want French doors?   Yes Lovey, I can do it!”   So of course this was great news, but I was curious how he was so sure it wouldn’t be a problem with the wind, so I asked him….   “How are you able to do them when no one else thinks it can be done?”    He said, “I’m going to install them so they’re going to open IN instead of OUT.    Nothing to catch the wind.”   Genius!   Such a simple fix but no one else including me had thought of it. 

He suggested a few picture windows to maximize the view, and a VERY cool side door that has a window in it that opens.   I love what he did!  

The new roof is going on! It will be wood with slates. As soon as the first boards went up, the whole thing started to really look like a house !!

So once the wall was removed where the new extension is going, it was time to prep the new and existing areas for new concrete foundations and slab floors. This started with digging out, then leveling and adding sand and crushed stone, and ended with the addition of steel reinforcements, before the cement truck made 3 trips up to the hill to pour the slabs. Once poured, they cured for a week before blocks were delivered and the work started on the walls.

Due to COVID-19, construction on this project could not begin for a while due to local restrictions. But in early March 2021, work began. One of the first steps was to remove the slates from the roof, trying to salvage what could be saved. I would love to reuse them but because I’m adding an extension to the original house, there will not be enough. But they can be sold to help pay for the new roof. The old slates are hand cut and in demand for restoration projects.

Immediately following the slates being removed, the old roof was demolished and removed as well. I, watching this all from New York via pictures and video from my cousin, realized that I now own 3 walls in Ireland. It was a little bit intimidating to look at what was left of the original house at this point.

So it was at this point that I got the very sad news from the contractors who were doing the work that there was a large vertical crack in the chimney of the huge fireplace, and that it had to be taken down because it was not going to be stable enough to be saved or used in the condition that it was in…. So, understanding that I did not want to have to deal with that after a new roof was put on, it seemed the only thing to do was to let them take it down, even though that was heartbreaking for me because that fireplace was literally my favorite part of the whole house. My cousin Ger who is a Stone Mason by trade, assured me that he would put it back just as it was. You can see in some of the pictures above that it has been removed.

This headstone located in the Drum Community Cemetery on the property of my Uncle Eugene & Aunt Ursula Vahey, represents generations of family history. Patrick and Ellen Killeen are my great-great-grandparents. Their daughter, Bridget, is my great-grandmother. Her husband, Patrick Collins, is my great-grandfather. Their daughter, Ellie Collins, is my grandmother. Ellie’s name got officially changed to Helen upon entering the US in 1925. She married James Daly in 1933 in NY. Helen and James had 3 children. Ann Bridget (my mother), James Jr. and Barbara Ellen.

And to be technically correct, Eugene is my mother’s first cousin…. So that would make him a cousin to me, but I always call them my aunt and uncle.

Mike is the bull belonging to my cousin Ger. He is really a big beautiful boy. Pretty friendly too, but I’m very cautious around him. He takes his job as leader of the pack seriously, as he should. So, while I would love to jump over the gate and hug the calves, and bring everyone treats, I would not do that if Mike is in that field.

The house and property are officially mine now. Deed and property map has been signed… So exciting; also a little bit overwhelming. I cant wait to get started and see it start shaping up into an amazing little cottage. But before we go there… Let’s start at the beginning.

So one day in early August 2018, I was in Clogher, County Mayo, Ireland, staying in my cousin’s empty house which I had started renting. He lives nearby with his fiance, and he and I took a quick ride over to pick up his Mom, my aunt, to bring her back up to the house for dinner. On the way, he took a turn and I recognized from where he went that we must have been going to stop by his sheds on our way for some reason, and sure enough he pulled in to the driveway up at the top of the hill which leads to his sheds.

He parked the car facing this dilapidated little cottage that sits out in front of his sheds and his large fields beyond. So as we sat in the car looking at this tiny old cottage with a giant hole in the roof and another through the wall, (I had seen it many times before having been up to the sheds with him numerous times) I assumed we were there for him to check on a sheep or cow or some other errand that he had to do in the barn. But, as we sat there he started talking and was prefacing his comments with a few disclaimers. He started off, “…so this is just an idea… I was just thinking about it and it’s just a thought… and I wanted to see what you thought of it … when you were asking me about the prices of property around the area” (which I had been, just trying to get an idea) he continued, ” I realized that you were serious about maybe finding a place over here for yourself as a retirement place, or whatever…”

So I said, “yes, I am serious… just looking for the future, but I would love to do something like that.” So with that, he says, “well again, I’m just throwing it out there, but what about this place? It’s been in this condition for so long and I hate that it’s in such bad shape and always wanted to do something with it just to fix it up, but life being how it is I never seem to have the time at the right moment to be able to focus on it…. but if it’s something you were interested in, we could do it as a project. It would be fairly simple to fix up, it’s a very simple little place. I would divide the piece of property from mine, and you would have a house in Ireland… Right up the way from where your grandmother was born.”

Just down the hill down the road from this house is the site of my grandmother’s family house where she was born in 1909.

So that’s how it happened. I said YES before he was even done asking.

More fun facts about this piece of property: it is surrounded on 3 sides by family owned property. Immediately behind the house are my cousin’s “sheds” I mentioned. This is a very large barn with an adjacent smaller one with a workshop attached. So sheep and cows, lambs and calves galore.

I took this picture from my car. That’s the house with a few friends there in the foreground. I’m on the road here, so you can see it has a nice big front yard.

Thanks for joining me!

I’m so excited about this project.  It’s something that I often thought about, but believed it was an impossibility, until an opportunity came along very unexpectedly.   I now own a small farmhouse / cottage in County Mayo, Ireland, that is a stone’s throw from where my grandmother was born …literally just down the road….   

The house has been vacant for a long time, and YES that is a tree growing through the large hole in the roof… but in due time it will all be taken care of and start shaping up into a proper Irish Cottage.   So, here are some pictures of what it looks like now…  Soon I will be calling these the “BEFORE” pictures because we will be able to compare them to everything that comes AFTER…