The owner of 1 Winton Avenue made the decision to buy it within 10 minutes of first seeing it in 1987, negotiating the deal in the sunlight of the large drawing room window while the seller’s phone rang continuously with other househunters wanting to view it.
It’s easy to see why. Built in the 1860s, the villa-style home has fine period features including 12ft high ceilings, pitch pine floors, fine cornicing and ceiling roses and marble fireplaces in its two reception rooms, one on either side of the hall and each a mirror image of the other.
In 1987 the house was sold as having two and a half bedrooms and an outdoor loo. If an estate agent had been selling it he would have talked of it being “in need modernisation”.
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The current owner was undeterred. “I could see it was a gem,” he recalls. He could also see the potential there was to extend its original 176sq m (1,900sq ft) by excavating the garden level.
An electrical engineer by trade he knew that the property’s 3ft walls could take such underpinning.
Restoration
The first thing he did was restore the portico over the front door which sets the tone for the classically decorated elegant interior. A striking series of glass panels, interpreted from Matisse by Co Galway-based artist Denise Hogan, turn a door into the bathroom on the hall return into a focal point.
The bathroom, once a wooden structure on stilts, is now surprisingly spacious with a shower, bidet and opaque glass panels washing it in light.
Designed by Amdega, it hints at the gorgeous conservatory below.
The main bedroom and a second roomy double, similar in size, are also at this level. Both fine rooms overlook the garden.
The kitchen is at garden level and feels bright thanks to the addition of a large timber conservatory that adjoins it and to the fact that the owner installed a window to the side of the house, where the chimney breast for the range originally was.
The elegant conservatory is a really smart addition. Two steel columns support the bathroom upstairs and French doors lead out to the very private back garden where there is even a space shielded from view to hang laundry.
The detached house has a very useful side entrance too – handy for bringing out the bins.
At this level there is also a laundry room lit by a rooflight and a large hot press with 35ft of deep shelving. What was originally the maid’s room is now a large bathroom.
There are two more bedrooms to the front of the house, in a part that didn’t exist when the owner bought it. These have been dug out adding about 55sq m (600sq ft) to the size of the property.
The granite discovered in the excavation works has been used to build stepped gardens to the front.
Number 1 is for sale through Douglas Newman Good for €1.6 million
