Longwood Avenue is one of Portobello's best roads. Leading off the South Circular Road south to the Grand Canal, the houses on its right hand side, as you drive up, all have west-facing back gardens.
Number 42 is one such property. The mid-terrace redbrick has been in the owners’ family for years; they moved into it about seven years ago and began an upgrade that included new plumbing, rewiring and uPVC windows throughout.
They also laid dark laminate wood flooring in the hall, where there is really fine decorative ceiling plasterwork, and in the interconnecting reception rooms.
These good rooms are partitioned by an unusual set of folding doors that have beveled glass panels and open with two of the three panels folding back on each other to one side of the room while the third panel opens as a more traditional interconnecting door. Both rooms have lovely decorative cornicing and ceiling heights of about three metres.
The front room overlooks the street and has a stone fireplace that has been painted with a pair of bakelite bell pulls, one of either side of the hearth, remind you that once upon a time home owners here had servants to summon to bring tea when visitors called.
The formal dining room has a different style of fireplace – more art nouveau-inspired with a brass hood and a tiled insert.
The hall return is laid out much as it would have been 100 years ago. It comprises a breakfast room where the ceiling is just two metres high and this leads through to a U-shaped kitchen with roof lights to bring more light in and glass doors leading out to a sandstone-clad patio, a sun trap where the family dines on warm evenings.
Many of the houses on the road have opened up this back space to create a big open-plan kitchen, living dining, and with the garden facing due west this refurbishment would really benefit this residence.
Under such works, and subject to planning, the guest WC, currently located to the rear of the kitchen, could be moved under the stairs.
A set of steps take you from the patio up to a lawned garden that is over six metres wide. The garden is private and sunny, a real boon for a property located so close to the city centre.
At the end of the garden is a large shed that is the same width and some 5.5m deep. It has vehicular access to the rear and there is also scope to build a very nice one-storey home office or, subject to planning, a mews. However, with the back of the house and potential less than 10m from the property’s back wall at present it would be difficult to apply for planning for such a dwelling.
Upstairs there are four bedrooms. There is one located on the return where the family bathroom is also. The master bedroom, set to the rear of the first floor, has garden views. There are two more bedrooms to the front where the owners subdivided the large room that would have spanned the width of the house into two smaller rooms for the children.
Measuring 160sq m/1,717sq feet, the property is asking €895,000 through agents SherryFitzGerald.
