Man Inherits Grandfather's 200-Year-Old Cottage And Significantly Transforms Building Into New Home

Jan 22, 2021 by apost team

At the beginning of 2020, a man from Ireland named Jack Shelly decided that he was going to fix up a 200-year-old cottage that was passed down from his grandfather to Jack’s dad 11 years ago. His goal was to get the renovation done over the summer and make it rent-ready by August of that year. The house is not up for rent on vacation rental company Airbnb just yet but it has made a ton of progress so far. Read on to see the incredible transformation of this fixer-upper!

There’s a cottage in almost every fairytale

There is just something so storybook-like about cottages. The vines, the rustic-looking masonry, the pebbled path to the front door — They are the enigmas of houses, invoking a sense of wonder and curiosity when we walk or drive by them. Not a shocking thing, considering that they are usually really old buildings.

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In March of last year, a man from Mullinahone, Ireland embarked on an incredible home renovation project. Jack Shelly’s grandfather owned a 200-year-old cottage which was passed down to Jack’s dad back in 2010 after his aforementioned grandfather passed away at the age of 89. The renovation project has garnered quite the attention online, especially on TikTok, as Jack shares the progress of it on his social media accounts. In one of his videos, Jack explains that his dad well remembers his childhood spent growing up in the cottage. “So, my father, his parents, and his five brothers and sisters grew up in this two-bedroom house with no insulation and singled-glazed windows,” he said. 

Jack goes on to explain that even though the house was passed on to his dad, the house had been vacant ever since his grandfather passed on. “It has been vacant ever since and slowly deteriorating and at the start of this year,” he said in one of his videos. “I decided that it was time to do something about it.

And so, Jack went to work. In his Instagram bio, Jack describes himself as someone who is “passionate about all things property,” — This project would be more than right up his alley.

Before the new and pretty stuff could come in, Jack had to first clear out the old that was in the cottage. For the start of the renovation, Jack started demolishing everything that was on the inside of the house. “So we started clearing it out slowly but surely and there was a lot of rubble that came out,” Jack explains in one of his videos. After a first few weeks of clearing out the house, Jack decided that he would document the entire journey and share it with people on social media. “It was around this time that I started documenting the journey on TikTok and Instagram. This video went viral and I got 45,000 followers in 24 hours,” he said. I have been documenting the whole journey in detail since and have really enjoyed interacting with people through these platforms.”

In his first TikTok video, which was posted in May 2020, we see him hacking down a blue sink in the cottage with a sledgehammer.

“We started clearing it out slowly but surely and there was a lot of rubble that came out,” Jack said in one of his videos posted back in June 2020. “We are also making a lot of progress over the last three months. There is a lot of work to be done. New windows have to go in. New installation. New plumbing. New electrics. New heating.”

His budget

Jack set the budget for the renovation to be at about 25,000 euros (approximately US$30,400). Last August, he took to Instagram to share a breakdown of the expenses incurred for the renovation works since the start of the project and said that he had spent 14,266 euros (approximately US$17,300) thus far, and projected a 4000-euro (approximately US$4,865) budget to buy bedroom furniture. Jack has been regularly posting updates of the progress of the home which garners views by the hundreds of thousands, making him sort of a celebrity on TikTok. His most-watched video with close to 9 million views currently is one where he shows a spray painting job being done for the exterior of the house when the sprayer breaks just before it could paint the last unpainted brick.

It’s all coming together but not quite yet done

Last month, Jack posted a video to his YouTube channel titled “Update on the Renovation” where he explained the progress made at the cottage so far. He shared that they got a builder to build a new chimney and rebuilt the entire roof of the home. His plan was to install windows in the rod so that it will shine some light down the stairs of the second floor and into the kitchen.

A lot of the work done in the house is all thanks to Jack’s nifty DIY skills. He has even created his own concrete mixture to fill the bathroom tiles with!

The cottage is really coming together. Jack has had the exterior of the house painted gray, and the front door is a unique “Raspberry Lane” color.

Latest update

Jack said that he hoped to list the house on Airbnb by the end of January, but it seems like it still has a bit more to go before he can start renting it out. In the latest update posted on his Instagram just yesterday, January 21st, Jack shared in detail about the unique way they had to fix up the bathrooms, which is very helpful for people who might face the same problems as he did. He added that the bathrooms had “lagged behind the rest of the house,” but that he wanted two bathrooms instead of one since he will be advertising the house on Airbnb for up to eight people.

We cannot wait to see the end product!

Do you think Jack can finish the house and put it up for rent by the end of this month? Would you stay in this cottage? Let us know your thoughts on this story in the comments and be sure to pass it along, especially to those who you know enjoy a good home renovation story.