A Victorian house in Monkstown, Co Dublin, has had several smart makeovers in the past few decades: the villa-style house had already been extended when the vendors bought it at the peak of the property boom. Since then, they’ve put their own stamp on the house with a number of changes that include installing a new kitchen, a new staircase, and upgraded windows and doors. Walls upstairs and down are panelled, decorative detail that has the practical advantage of silencing the noise of traffic from busy Monkstown Road.
Number 3 Monkstown Road, Monkstown, Co Dublin, a 170sq m (1,830sq ft) four- to five-bedroom end-terrace house is now for sale for €1.395 million through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty. The couple bought it at auction in 2007 for €1.45 million. It has an E1 Ber.
Number 3 is a villa-style upside-down house, with bedrooms and a study downstairs. A tall hedge curves over the front gate, with a wide gravelled path leading past curved box hedging and pretty herbaceous borders to the front steps. These lead up to the bright blue original front door of number 3, topped by a stained glass fanlight. It opens directly into the livingroom, which runs from the front to the back of the house.
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The top floor has a simple if slightly unusual layout, consisting of the livingroom, the diningroom on the left opening into a compact kitchen and an outdoor decked terrace at the same level to the back. French doors open from the kitchen on to the terrace, as do separate double doors from the livingroom, making the stonewalled terrace effectively an outdoor room. Surrounded by old stone walls and dotted with potted plants, it’s a pretty space with views across to the Dublin mountains. The house has no back garden.
The livingroom has a sash window at the front and two tall narrow recessed windows on either side of the fireplace; a marble mantelpiece surrounds the wood-effect condensing gas fire. Glazed pocket doors on the left open into a double-height diningroom, with a dramatic arched ceiling with a skylight.
The diningroom has a sash window with working shutters matching that in the livingroom and an open fireplace with tall shelved alcoves on either side. Floor-to-ceiling storage is hidden behind panels. The diningroom opens directly into the kitchen/breakfastroom, where a movable island stands on top of a glazed panel looking down to the hall below; above is an arched skylight. Smart kitchen units are painted charcoal grey and the island and counter are marble-topped. A railed corner in the kitchen has an exposed granite wall and piping from a wood-burning stove in the study below.
An easily-negotiated spiral staircase – wide, with open-tread solid oak steps – in a corner of the livingroom leads to the bottom floor. There are three bedrooms, two doubles and a single, here, and a study, which could be used as a bedroom, as well as a family bathroom and utility room. The main bedroom at the front of the house has a sash window with a deep windowsill, built-in wardrobes behind tongue-and-groove panels and an en suite toilet.
The fully tiled family bathroom has a deep free-standing copper bath in an alcove and a step-in shower. A utility room with built-in shelving and a Belfast sink opens off the downstairs hall on the right at the back – and a door on the left opens into a handsomely fitted-out study: it has built-in shelving, partly-exposed granite walls and a wood-burning stove in the corner. French doors open into the garage, which could, subject to planning permission, be converted to more accommodation.
The garage has an up-and-over electric door opening on to Montpelier Manor, a cul-de-sac off Monkstown Road, the last left turn before the traffic lights on to the Blackrock bypass. The owners originally used the garage for parking but now have two residential parking places on Montpelier Manor. (Montpelier Parade, the long terrace of houses set back from Monkstown Road, is a short distance from the houses at the very end of Monkstown Road.) Number 3 is a short walk down nearby Alma Road to Seapoint Dart station and is close to a number of bus routes.
