St Thomas Road is regarded as one of Mount Merrion’s lovelier roads, leading from The Rise to near the junction of Fosters Avenue and North Avenue, and close to a side entrance to UCD.
A detached dormer bungalow with a red-tiled roof along this quiet road has almost doubled in size since it was bought at auction in 1988 for €83,000. Gunne’s brochure at the time said “the property would benefit from some internal refinements”.
The owner went a lot further than that: in 2001, the house was redesigned by architect Carole Pollard and rebuilt: now the four-bed detached 266sq m (2,863sq ft) house, is for sale through Lisney for €1.395 million.
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The large L-shaped open-plan kitchen/dining/livingroom at the back is now the heart of the house. It’s a bright space, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass windows and doors and a pitched glazed ceiling next to the dining area, opening onto a patio. The kitchen beside it has Shaker-style units, black polished countertops and island unit and is painted a striking shade of russet red. The kitchen is floored with terracotta tiles, and the diningroom and livingroom are oak floored, like most of the rest of the house. There’s a wood-burning stove in the livingroom, which has two sets of doors also opening into the garden.
Storage
A utility room off the kitchen leads into a garage used mostly for storage – and there’s a “patch panel” here where the techie owner can control TV, CAT 5 and fibre cabling to each room. There’s also underfloor heating downstairs, energy efficient argon glass-paned windows and a central vacuuming system.
Other accommodation downstairs includes a sitting room which runs from the front to the back patio, an en suite double bedroom with fitted wardrobes and a study. A curved oak staircase leads from the wide entrance hall to a large landing, big enough to fit a sofa and bookshelves, with two Velux windows over it.
Two more double bedrooms and a family bathroom with tongue-and-groove panelling open off the landing; a few steps lead down to the main bedroom at the back of the house.
There’s a good-sized partially covered patio outside, and a 95ft long lawn with apple trees sloping down to tall cypress trees. The gravelled front garden has room to park three to four cars.
