The building presents a four-bay southern front to the road, though one of those bays has been absorbed by a modern addition on the right-hand side. A small porch masks a doorway that sits slightly off-centre, a common feature of vernacular construction where the internal layout, rather than external symmetry, governed where the entrance fell. The roof, still thatched, is hipped at both ends, meaning it slopes down on all four sides rather than finishing in a gable, and a chimney rises from the left, again positioned away from the centreline.

What gives the house an additional layer of interest is that it is not entirely alone in its form. A closely similar dwelling stands on the western side of the same road, suggesting that this small cluster in Ballyerrig once represented a more typical pattern of local building that has since largely vanished elsewhere. Vernacular houses of this kind were built to practical local traditions rather than to any architect's plan, using available materials and arrangements that had evolved over centuries of rural life in Cork. The fact that this one remains occupied, rather than abandoned or converted, is part of what keeps it legible as a piece of living architectural history rather than a ruin.