Ballsbridge: €3.5m: There is a great deal of the classical elegance of its period about number 3 Waterloo Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. Neck-craningly high ceilings have classy cornices, ceiling centrepieces are refined or shaped like starfish, the sweep of entrance hallway has an arch framing the sweep of stairs beyond.
Then there are the the long, mostly original sash windows, framed in swathes of draped curtains and, a decorative highlight this, the vividly hand-painted, Chinese silk wallpaper in the front-facing drawingroom.
Situated at the lively, Baggot Street end of what is one of Dublin 4's most notable roads, the house dates from the mid-1840s. The main part of the house has three bedrooms and two reception rooms, a two-bedroom garden level apartment has separate access and the overall floor area covers some 234.9sq m (2,528sq ft). A sheltered, west-facing rear garden is furnished and paved and waiting for sunny days. Colliers Jackson-Stops is looking after the sale and quoting an advised minimum value (AMV) of €3.5 million in advance of the May 17th auction.
The original lay-out has been more conveniently rearranged to create two bedrooms where there was a first floor livingroom and the garden level apartment where there were kitchen quarters. With a careful eye to detail, the owners had the decorative cornice reworked when they divided the first floor livingroom into two bedrooms. The main bedroom, to the rear, has a cleverly discreet en suite shower.
The family bathroom is something of a pièce de résistance. On the first floor return, it has an original claw-footed bath, window overlooking the garden and separate shower. Each of the interconnecting ground floor reception rooms has an original and functioning marble fireplace. The one in the diningroom was brought down from the first floor.
A door leads from the end-of-hall, galley-style kitchen to a deck area from where steps lead down to the garden. New owners might prefer, however, to use the house as a single unit and reinstall a kitchen/family area at garden level.
The extra-wide granite steps to the front entrance climb from a pebbled and planted front garden where there is parking for a couple of cars. A not incidental plus is the proximity of the beautifully maintained and magnificently large rear gardens of the neighbouring 1 Waterloo Road, originally landscaped and laid-out by the wife of painter Paul Henry.
