The exterior has been described as looking like a prison wall, while neighbours have likened it to an office block or a laboratory. The property is in fact a three-bedroom house on a prominent site that’s catching the attention of passersby heading to and from Seapoint Dart station.
The planning process The site had four failed planning applications when Odos Architects were hired by the previous owner. There had been a lot of objections to previous designs, explain architects Darrell O'Donaghue and John Crowley. "While the houses on Alma Road are all period properties, they are all different and that formed part of the case we made to the planning office. The planners wanted us to retain the old stone wall and the coach house. The site was a former orchard and they jokingly suggested we try and maintain that impression."
Odos liked that idea and ran with it. They agreed to an exterior in blended brick. “There were to be no windows on the Seapoint Avenue side of the building. There were great concerns from the neighbours because we were excavating down over 2.5m.”
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Convincing the client Conor Grealis, a quantity surveyor, bought the house in February 2013 for less than €400,000 and he enlisted the help of his builder father, PJ Grealis, of Grealis Developments, from Mulranny, Co Mayo. PJ and Conor met the architects and were taken through a 3D sketch of the house to show its volume. Then they discussed finishes and design details.
The house has few windows. Instead, walls of glass illuminate the villa-style property. Vertical strip lights add warmth and rooflights that sit flush with the ceiling wash more light in from above.
The builder While PJ had built "20 one-off houses in the last 25 years", he was "nervous" about the Alma Road construction. The house was to have no architraving or skirting boards, rather shadow gaps where the vertical wall met the floor and ceiling. It was the first contemporary and A-rated design he has built and it's been a steep learning curve.
Major snags The fins, the timber verticals designed to wash light from rooflights into the kitchen and lower deck hall, had to be redone. They were installed before Darrell had seen them and he insisted they start again. Why? "Because the joiner had fixed all the vertical timbers to a horizontal cross timber rather than fixing each to the top and bottom of the space they were to sit in," he explains. The work, which took the joiner 10 days to complete was thrown in the skip and restarted. While PJ agrees the result looks far more polished, redoing the work took another 10 days.
A-rated house The house has an A3 BER and is the first A-rated home PJ has built. It features no north-facing glazing, has a heat-recovery system, underfloor heating, solid concrete floors to minimise noise transfer, a solar panel on the south-facing roof of the coach house and a sedum roof. Interior Dún Laoghaire-based Lost Weekend styled the house for sale. "Our job is to go in and soften all the hard lines, adding a soft squishy sofa, and pops of colour to ping against the white and grey walls," says Declan Moloney.
It includes numerous statement pieces including an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair and a Plane Bed by Felix Stark in the master bedroom as well as basketry by Jude Cassidy.
Courtyard From the front door, a set of stairs lead to the livingroom. A simple white gloss kitchen with Siletone countertops by Home Boutique Kitchens has a small utility off it. A Super Elliptical table surrounded by Series 7 chairs in Playschool colours furnishes the diningroom. From the table you look across a granite courtyard to the sitting room.
Another courtyard separates the new build from the original coach house, now a double-height master bedroom accessed from outside via a set of steps and also from the ground floor corridor. It has a wall of storage four bays deep and 3.7m high that should accommodate even the greatest hoarder, but a ladder is needed to reach the top presses.
Sliding doors open out to a gravelled Zen-like space that features a silver birch tree and a wall four metres tall that divides the house from the property next door. It means that none of bedrooms are overlooked. There are two more bedrooms at garden level, each with sliding doors to outside. A large second sitting room or study overlooks the steps to the front and would make a great kids’ den. Planting was a big part of the overall design and nearby Howbert and Mays Gardens supplied foliage.
The house measures 168sq m (1,808sq ft), has 35sq m (376sq ft) of courtyard space and is asking €1.395million through agents Sherry FitzGerald. There is off-street parking for four or more cars.
What do the neighbours think? Locals have used all manner of excuse to cross the threshold for a look inside, PJ says. "One claimed her dog had lost something. Another said her son was moving home from the UK and asked to have a look around it to see if it was suitable."
To prevent a stampede at the viewing, he’s planning a private view for the neighbours. The open view takes place from 1pm to 2pm on Saturday, May 24th.
