Co-living is not a new concept, say two of the three owners of 14 Vesey Terrace, a handsome Victorian five-bedroom house built on the hill between Dún Laoghaire and Monkstown.
They should know, for they’ve have been living there in a house-share set-up since 1984. When they bought the property, they were the only owner-occupiers on their terrace; all the other three-storey over basement houses were set out in bedsits.
The couple bought with a friend of theirs almost 40 years ago and have lived together successfully .
The house had been used by the Dalkey School Project National School (DSPNS), who opened a multidenominational school on the premises in 1978, fitting up to 100 students in its 333sq m (3,584sq ft) of space.
“The bathrooms were divided into cubicles, with small toilets and urinals in all.”
What they paid for it will break buyers’ hearts. It cost IR£60,000, but at the time period homes were deeply unfashionable. The three invested a further IR£40,000 to upgrade it. This included installing full bathrooms and insulating the basement floor.
The couple live on most of the top two floors, while their friend took the rooms at hall and basement level.
They share bills, sitting down regularly to examine what they’ve paid out and who has used how many kilowatts. While it may sound terrible, like the energy equivalent of staking out a shelf in the fridge you all share, it makes a lot of sense, especially given the fact that one of the owners is an energy consultant and maps out all costings.
In an era of rising energy costs and in a house that comes to market as Ber exempt it will give the next owner an idea of what their major utilities will be. The electricity bill, in the calendar year of 2021, totalled €1,236 while their gas amounted to €2,011. That’s an combined annual cost of €3,247.
For context they use gas also for cooking and for hot water in the downstairs bathroom. Electricity is used for the ovens, and for hot water in the kitchen and bathroom upstairs.
The energy consultant explained that the heating was on from the beginning of September to the end of March, and in addition on cold days during the summer months.
The fact that the house is built on a north-south axis means that the sun streams into the rooms to the back. The windows throughout are enormous and fill the place with light. Some are double-glazed, and those that are not have secondary glazing.
The way they share the house means that all the rooms are used regularly.
The finest room in the house, the drawing room, is on the piano nobile, the first floor. It spans the width of the house to the front. It has fine period features, a pair of six over six pane windows – with shutters, like all of the windows – and overlooks Willowbank Park. This is the one room that is common to all. And it is rather magnificent with fine decorative plasterwork; in some of the rooms, this needs attention.
Across its four floors there are nine good-sized rooms, all well-proportioned with impressive ceiling heights, many with original red deal timber floorboards, with bathrooms on two of the returns. The first-floor return is a charming spot, with a bench set into its arched window and there are sea views across to Howth from the two front top floor rooms.
At basement level the ceiling heights are better than in the average three-bedroom semi. Extending to 2.6m the original kitchen was situated here, to the back of the house. This room has been subdivided to give a handy internal utility/tool room.
What the house doesn’t currently have is the big, open-plan kitchen living diner that a lot of buyers at this level of the market want. But, there is scope, subject to planning, to open up the reception rooms at entrance level to make it a large, dual-aspect space, with a big bay window overlooking the garden and with access to the large paved space via the return.
This south-facing paved space, which extends to 23m (77ft) in length, is gorgeously planted and home to apple, plum, pear and damson trees, all blossoming in its private and sun-warmed surrounds.
It’s likely the next owner will want to make some improvements – upgrading some of the windows, for example – but this is already a fine house, with room for a family to grow and thrive, all within minutes of the sea and plenty of schools, although the DSPNS is now located in Glenageary.
The property is seeking €1.695m through Sherry FitzGerald.
