There are secret attractions in this Edwardian redbrick home in Dún Laoghaire that was revamped and extended about seven years ago. Panels in the large open-plan kitchen/living/diningroom conceal a bar and a wine fridge, while bookshelves in the library push open to reveal a hidden study.
Architect Emmet Duggan created a lot of storage space in the renovation, carried out for previous owners. They had bought 44 York Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, for €825,000 in 2017, then sold it – after a revamp that nearly doubled it in size – for €1.62 million (both according to the Property Price Register) in 2021.
Four years later, it’s for sale for €1.85 million through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty. The current vendor has done little to change the house since moving in: it’s the same bright, A3-rated 250sq m (2,691sq ft) four-bed where, The Irish Times wrote in 2020, “attention to detail is outstanding”. Original features – ceiling coving, open fireplaces with cast-iron mantelpieces and colourful inset tiles – remain.
The house is about two-thirds of the way up busy York Road from Dún Laoghaire’s main street; it’s nearly opposite the tall granite building that was once the Bird’s Nest orphanage, which closed in the 1970s. (Six years ago it was redeveloped as a “luxury co-living residence”.)
Number 44 has space to park two cars behind an electronic gate in the gravelled front garden. The front door opens into a tiled porch with a stained-glass window and then into a front hall; like all the downstairs rooms, it has a dark timber parquet floor.
The large kitchen at the back of the house is a streamlined, uncluttered space: floor-to-ceiling navy units that include a corner pantry along one side of the kitchen conceal a multitude. A large island unit and countertop are topped with pale grey quartz and there’s a Quooker tap over the sink. The spacious livingroom has floor-to-ceiling windows looking on to the back garden on two sides.
Panels in the walls of the L-shaped diningroom – which opens through a wall of glazed doors and windows on to the patio outside – press open to reveal a bar and, underneath, a wine fridge.
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A panel next to the kitchen units turns out to be a door into a sittingroom painted a vivid red. Like the library off the front hall, it has an open fireplace with a white mantelpiece. Bookshelves in one corner of the library double as a hidden door which opens at a push into a small home office – a room which also connects into the sittingroom.
A good-sized utility room off the hall has unusual – and useful – wall-hung drying racks that extend across the room. A downstairs toilet has a colourful tiled floor.
Upstairs, there are four double bedrooms off the landing. A curved wall opens into the main bedroom, where two windows look over the sedum roof of the extension across to the back garden. It has wall of wardrobes – and a separate walk-in wardrobe on the way into the en suite.
Two bedrooms at the front of the house share a Jack-and-Jill en suite shower room and have an extra pane of glass added to their windows to minimise the sound of traffic on York Road. The smart main bathroom is part-tiled – with white tiles bordered in green – and has a large shower and a claw-foot bath.
The attic has been converted and is used as a gym, but could be a home office or small bedroom.
A good-sized granite patio steps up to a back garden that was the creation of the previous owner, says the vendor. It’s planted so that there’s colour most of the year; wisteria covers the back wall of the house from May. There’s a very mature apple tree in the garden, a maple, hydrangeas and roses.
