A house on Old Cabra Road was pretty dilapidated when its owners bought it in 2002 for €523,000: it had been rented for several years, had only a galley kitchen and was damp and cold. They embarked on a major renovation and, in 2006, architects Lawrence & Long created a new kitchen, dining room and sitting room at the rear of the 1920s redbrick.
This long, sleek, glass-walled space opening on to a large patio is the knockout feature of a home that also retains Art Deco-ish features in the original house, which was built in 1927. It also has a long, very private back garden with high hedges.
Now No 94 Old Cabra Road, a 130sq m (1,398sq ft) four-bed redbrick semi is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €895,000. It has a BER rating of E2.
An arched steel door inset into the arched redbrick entrance to the front porch shows the kind of trouble the vendors went to in their renovation. The front door, with its stained-glass panels, opens into a hall painted a pale green above white dado rails and restored anaglypta painted white. There is a small under-stairs toilet in the hall.
On the right of the hall, the living room and dining room – connected by sliding doors – have original polished wooden floors, as has the hallway. The living room at the front of the house has a bay window with stained-glass panels and is triple glazed, like all the windows at the front of the house, cutting noise from busy Old Cabra Road.
Both rooms have open fireplaces with 1920s-style large, dark, timber surrounds. In the dining room there’s a glass-fronted bookcase set into one side of the chimney breast and a tall drinks cupboard inset on the other side. French doors open from here to the back patio. Another door opens into the kitchen.
The very smart single-storey Schmidt kitchen, dining room and sitting room is a long, bright space with a wall of sliding Schüco doors on one side and a wall of glossy white kitchen units on the other. In between is the island unit, Corian-topped like the kitchen counter. There’s a small seating area with shelving at the end, next to a floor-to-ceiling window. The kitchen is floored with the same large granite tiles as the patio.
Upstairs, a single bedroom has been converted to a home office with a good-sized new window overlooking the back garden; it has a stripped and polished wooden floor, like all the bedrooms. Next to it is a fully tiled family bathroom.
The double bedrooms have fireplaces with tiled surrounds and fitted wardrobes; another bedroom, a small double fitted out as a child’s room, also has a fitted wardrobe. This room and the main bedroom at the front of the house have plantation shutters like those in the living room below.
Outside, a bed of lavender, concealing outdoor lighting, runs along one side of the patio. Three steps lead down to the lawn, where more lighting is concealed in the high laurel hedges. There are apple, pear and damson trees in the garden, and pots of dahlias at the end of the lawn. A garage at the side of the house has potential for conversion; at the back of it is a shed with toilet and sink. There’s a neat lawn at the front, and rose bushes under the front window, with good room for parking in the gravel driveway.
Old Cabra Road runs from Hanlon’s Corner on the North Circular Road up to Cabra Road. No 94 is opposite the junction with Glenbeigh Road, a short walk from Hanlon’s Corner. It’s about a 20-minute walk to the Grangegorman Luas stop and a shorter walk to the rapidly developing DIT Grangegorman campus.
