The two-storey red-brick houses that line one side of sections of Churchtown Road Lower were built in the early 1920s as part of a housing scheme for the servicemen who fought in the first World War, under the Irish Sailor’s and Soldier’s Land Trust. Built as modest homes, they tend now to fetch strong prices for several reasons including their good rear gardens (long enough for a good-sized vegetable patch), their location opposite Milltown Golf Club and beside the Windy Arbour Luas stop, the scope to extend to the front and rear and, the more intangible reason, that they are pretty looking, especially those with their original timber exterior shutters.

Less than five years after it last came on the market, number 39 Churchtown Road Lower is once again for sale. Last time the asking price for the 78sq m, 840sq ft three-bed mid-terrace home was €495,000 – it sold for €492,500. The new owners waited until 2017 before doing a major renovation. The Ber which when they bought was a chilly E1 is now, with the long list of home improvements including new windows, improved insulation, new radiators and a new boiler, a warmer, cheaper-to-run B3. They also decorated throughout in a contemporary style with neutral walls, oak flooring and pale carpets.

They didn’t change the layout or extend. There are two rooms downstairs, the front a living room, the rear the kitchen now fitted with grey-painted new units with a timber worktop. Upstairs the three bedrooms are two doubles, and a single. The bathroom was gutted and redone, newly tiled, with a custom shower door and Villeroy and Boch fittings.

The railings and gate are gone from the front garden and there are two off-street car park spaces while still leaving a good stretch of lawn. The Luas runs at the back of the long back garden.

Number 39 Churchtown Road Lower is for sale through DNG asking €595,000.