The redbrick near the end of a terrace of Victorian homes facing the Grand Canal in Dublin 8 was, says one of the vendors, “effectively a new build” when the couple bought it in 2013 for €380,000. Number 3 Portobello Road had been completely rebuilt in 2012 by a builder following a fire.
The house now is much as it was when the couple bought it: a small, modern home with a smart fit-out, solar-powered water heating, good insulation, double-glazed Rationel windows and a B2 BER. Interiors are painted white and it has dark timber floors throughout. The house has no garden – although there is a tiny courtyard used to store bikes – but is directly across the road from the tree-lined path beside the canal.
Number 3 Portobello Road, Portobello, Dublin 8, a 94sq m (1,011sq ft) two-bed – with an attic used as a third bedroom – is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €625,000. It's a big price for a small house in this increasingly fashionable area near the city centre, but in line with local asking prices. The couple are moving because, with a five-year-old child, they need more space, and hope to move to a larger house in the neighbourhood.
The front door opens directly into the open-plan livingroom/kitchen that takes up the ground floor. There’s a wood-burning stove in a recess below a mantelpiece and built-in cupboards on either side. The small island unit in the kitchen area has high and low seating.
The fully tiled ground-floor bathroom at the back of the house is particularly smart; it has large white wall tiles, large dark floor tiles and a pretty speckled showerwall panel in the step-in shower. Beside it is an oval freestanding bath. There is an option to install a Velux window in the ceiling. A door beside the bathroom opens into the tiny courtyard.
Upstairs are two bedrooms; a single at the front is prettily decorated as a child’s room, and there’s space for a desk by the window, looking over the canal. A double at the back has a smart, part-mirrored, built-in wardrobe with glossy white doors. Another steep set of stairs leads to the third-floor attic room, a double used as the main bedroom. It has similar built-in wardrobes and an ensuite shower room smartly fitted out like the main bathroom.
There is on-street residents’ permit parking outside. Number 3 is beside Italian restaurant I Monelli, on the corner of Kingsland Parade, with Locks restaurant at the other end of the terrace. Portobello Road is just a street away from Lennox Street, with its trendy shops, cafés and restaurants, and several streets west of Portobello Plaza, where crowds gathered a few months ago. (They’ve largely gone since general reopening, says the owner.)
