Residential

Family bungalow in Stillorgan for €875,000

This five-bedroom house with good-size private garden has been extended out and up

Bernice Harrison's face
Bernice Harrison
Thu May 28 2015 - 05:30

The Merville estate in Stillorgan was built in the 1950s, a mix of detached and semi-detached bungalows with large gardens and quiet roads that quickly became popular with families.

They still are, and when houses change hands, new owners tend to extend. That’s probably not going to happen at 29 Merville Road, which is for sale through Daphne L Kaye for €875,000, because over the years its owners have already extended the detached house both out and up.

The five-bedroom bungalow now measures about 197sq m (2,125 sq ft). It’s on a corner site, which gave the owners considerable scope. They first went up into the attic to add a double bedroom with an en suite shower room. That was in the mid-1990s and about 10 years ago they reworked the kitchen, adding a large familyroom with windows on three sides, a pitched ceiling and doors out to the garden.

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Open kitchen

The kitchen is a large open area with a granite-topped island unit and space for a family dining table. Next to it is a utility room and a food-preparation room which, along with the large mirror over the cooker in the kitchen (a feature of demonstration kitchens everywhere), indicates perhaps that the owners are a little more than, as the agent says, “interested in cooking”.

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The livingroom at the front has deep bay windows and a solid-fuel stove. Off the hall are four small double bedrooms (one is used as a study) and a large family bathroom.

An indication of the size of the corner site that the house sits on is that extending has made little impact on the still good-sized private garden, which is bordered by tall hedges and includes a drive-in space for one car. Two seating areas to capture the sun have been nicely laid out and landscaped with flagstones and brick.

Given that the house has been extended, modernised and clearly well kept over recent years by the owners, who are downsizing, the BER of F is a disappointing measurement, which will likely give new owners some energy-efficiency work to do. They will also likely decorate throughout, updating the paint colours with more neutral and brighter colours.