Detached Dún Laoghaire two-bed, with a little Narnia upstairs, for €775,000

Behind wooden gates at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac off Mounttown Road, about equidistant from Monkstown village and the centre of Dun Laoghaire, lies a cute white house with a front door painted in a sunshine colour that points to the playful spirit inside.

Designed to a high specification in 2000, number 21 Glandore Park is among the most recent of the individual houses built along the road from the 1970s onwards.

It is recorded on the Property Price Register as selling for €330,000 in 2012 and the current owners paid €560,000 in late 2020; within a short time they extended their family, along with the house, and are now looking to move within the area. Number 21 is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald with an asking price of €775,000.

Originally, the front of the house to the left of the door was stepped back but architect Darragh Breathnach of DUA pushed the kitchen side forward and reused the window in a new box bay. This is one of many ingenious space-generating quirks in the house, which extends to 97sq m (1,044 sq ft) and has a Ber of C1.

To the right of the hall, with its new understairs storage, are two big bright bedrooms, one on either side of a smart, fully tiled wet room with Duravit fittings.

Morning sun pours through the oversized rooflight in the back bedroom, which offers a worm’s-eye view of a neighbouring, ever-changing eucalyptus tree. This room was also extended to give a dressing area that could work as a study.

There are windows and rooflights aplenty throughout the white-painted house, used to great effect in the open-plan kitchen/dining/living space that ends in a triangle. It’s designed to feel like a boat, says the owner, with a void overhead, a huge window on one side and French doors to the garden on the other, and two square portholes above these.

The floor is decked in solid white oak planks, which the owners matched when extending. Streamlined kitchen units are topped with polished stone, the two little children enjoy having breakfast at the table in the bay window, and full-height cupboards beside it give away another of the architect’s clever secrets.

The doors open to reveal a full staircase, so what was originally a Stira with storage is now a nest like Narnia; the owners converted the attic to a bright, tucked-away room that they use as an office and for occasional sleepovers. To one side a green-tiled bathroom is, as the owner describes, “like a train carriage”.

Facing the top of the stairs there’s a spot that could have been a plain wall at a 45-degree angle. Instead, however, the joiner made steps on which the owners display a colourful collection of ceramics and picture books; it has the appeal of a holiday-town shop window.

Indeed, the owner says their favourite local amenity is the West Pier at Dún Laoghaire, which is a handy walk down nearby York Road.

The owners are keen gardeners and have made much of the 12m by 22m plot, cultivating trees and shrubs in the beds at the edges, and grouping countless containers around the house; their potting shed was designed and oriented for sunlight to help little things to grow. A bit like the house itself.