When the owners of a 1930s house on Silchester Road in Glenageary, Co Dublin, decided to modernise it after buying it 16 years ago, they wanted a bright open-plan design where you could see from the front door through to the back garden. Architect Paul Brazil created it for them: the front door of Alverno now opens into a tiled hall that looks straight through a smart modern kitchen to French doors opening on to the deck at the back.
Alverno, 11 Silchester Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin, a 255sq m (2,750sq ft) five-bedroom semi-detached house at the more modern end of Silchester Road near Glenageary Road Lower – the stately Victorian mansions are at the Adelaide Road end – is now for sale by private treaty through Sherry FitzGerald for €1.795 million.
New owners may want to redecorate this comfortable lived-in family home but the serious work of renovating it has been done. Accommodation downstairs includes a livingroom on the right of the front hall, a more formal drawingroom/diningroom on the left which runs from the front to the back of the house, and a large kitchen/breakfastroom/lounge.
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Most of the back of the house is glazed, with French doors opening on to the garden, and there are recessed lights everywhere.
French doors
The drawingroom was extended at both ends, with square arches framing a separate seating area at the front and a dining area at the back; French doors open from here into the garden. The smaller livingroom has a sandstone fireplace and part-panelled walls.
The kitchen/breakfastroom is the heart of the home. It’s a very bright space, with a high arched ceiling with roof windows. The Travertine-floored kitchen has black-granite countertops and an island unit and a seating area at the back surrounded by glass; the breakfastroom side of the space has more French doors opening on to the back deck. At the other side of the breakfastroom is a small timber-floored TV lounge with a stove. A door from here opens into a utility room. Downstairs accommodation also includes a guest toilet by the front door.
Upstairs, there are four bedrooms, all doubles, opening off the first floor landing, as well as a family bathroom. Two share an en suite shower room – doors from a bedroom at the front and one at the back both open into the bathroom.
The fifth bedroom, built under the eaves, may appeal to parents who want to retreat from the hurly burly of family life: 15 stairs lead up to a landing – where an intercom phone connects to the kitchen – with a Velux window and built-in wardrobes. The good-sized double bedroom is on the left: it has a window seat overlooking the back garden and an en suite with power shower and Jacuzzi bath. On the other side of the landing, there’s a dressingroom-cum-study space.
The back garden – it has a pond and is mainly in lawn – is 102ft long, even though a slice of it was sold recently. (Several of Alverno’s neighbours also sold land at the bottom of their gardens, where new houses have been built.) There’s a lawn at the front of the house and lots of room for parking in the gravelled front drive beyond the electronic gates.
