Architect Noel O’Dwyer and his wife Claudia, an events project manager with a background in drama, bought a house in Dalkey village close to the peak of the Celtic Tiger in 2005 – and spent all of their money on it.
Number 16 Railway Road, built in 1897, cost €1.1 million at the time and needed a lot of work. “We’ve been doing it up for most of the past 20 years, with builders here for all that time,” says Noel. But architects always want to build their own house, he adds, so with their children nearly grown, the couple are selling and Noel, a partner in Node Architecture, is hoping either to build or to restore another old property. So number 16 is now for sale through Vincent Finnegan, seeking €1.5 million.
Noel’s architect’s eye for clever design is evident throughout 16 Railway Road, a 170sq m (1,830sq ft) terraced four-bed a short walk from Dalkey Dart station, slotted in beside the Guinea Pig restaurant, and nearly opposite the corner with Finnegan’s pub.
Victorian period features, like the bay windows with working shutters and centre roses, are complemented by more modern fittings and furnishings, many with an art deco-ish flavour. Two-storey at the front, it’s three-storey at the rear and has a C3 Ber.
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The complete revamp involved knocking down a one-bed apartment at the back of the house to create a private garden, making Noel “one of the few people who reduced the square footage of their home in southside Dublin”, he says. The lawn, bordered by a stone wall on one side, stretches across to steps leading up to a raised granite terrace with built-in seating. A path beside a timber shed – with built-in seating on one side painted bright turquoise – runs behind neighbouring buildings; it leads to a gate opening on to a footpath down to Writer’s Corner at the edge of Dalkey village. Cedar battens on the back of the house frame the sliding glass doors into the house.
Tall cast-iron black gates open on to the pebbled front garden, where there’s room to park two cars beside the ivy-clad gable wall of the restaurant next door. The front door opens into a hall floored with Jura marble, panelled and painted white below the dado rail, grey above, a feature that continues all the way up to the top floor, where the ceiling is also panelled.
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A livingroom on the left has a marble fireplace and is floored with dark oak in a chevron design. There’s original cornicing and a centre rose, from which is suspended a large modern light fixture which casts an orangey glow on the room.
The open-plan kitchen/family room and diningroom at the back is the heart of the house: a wide arch connects the kitchen/family room to the diningroom – but the design of each side is different. The dining area, next to the sliding glass doors opening on to the back garden, is bright, with a large pyramid double glazed roof light over it.
A 1926 silver-plated French Canadian working stove (found in a salvage place in Inchicore) is set into a brick wall painted grey; on the opposite wall, a frosted glass door opens into a utility room-cum-bar: it’s small, but accommodates a washer and dryer, cupboards and shelving for wine bottles and glasses. A small fully-tiled toilet beside the stove alcove has two facing mirrors, making the space seem larger. The diningroom is floored with an oak parquet floor in a herringbone design.
Kitchen countertops and a long island in the kitchen and family room, floored with beige Jura marble, are topped with polished stone. Units are painted a very black Farrow & Ball Studio Green, contrasting with walls painted white; in the family room, a TV sits in the middle of a curved wall painted black, flanked by two dramatic Charles Rennie Mackintosh floor-to-ceiling mirrors. It’s no surprise that an Eames chair faces it – Noel clearly likes art deco style. A cloakroom is concealed neatly in a corner of this space.
Upstairs, there are two double bedrooms on the first floor, two on the second. There’s a built-in bookcase next to a landing window overlooking Railway Road and a stained-glass window in the ceiling over the stairs, below an attic window. The main bedroom has a bay window with a window seat that conceals storage for shoes beneath it. It has fitted wardrobes and modern silver lights suspended from a centre rose. Another double bedroom at the back of the house has a fitted desk and shelving (with an impressive CD collection).
The family bathroom on the second floor is fully tiled, has two wash-hand basins with a mirrored wall running the length behind them, bath with shower behind a curved transparent screen and timber light fittings suspended from the ceiling.
