When Dermot Bannon’s Room to Improve first graced our screens, contractor Ivan Duggan was one of the many builders who got their moment in the sun. He featured in the first two episodes and has gone from strength to strength since. Through his company Inex Works he now renovates homes for well-heeled clients throughout the city.

He was looking for another project when he bought number 1a Oakfield Place, then a site, in 2019, with the benefit of planning.

It took two roll-on skips, the big ones construction firms use, just to clear the site, he says. “There [were more than] 40 mattresses and loads of building rubble.” Even he didn’t really see its potential until it was emptied of the detritus.

As his architect brother Emmet Duggan helped to draft interior layouts, a plan came together and he decided to turn the house, originally an investment buy, into their family home. Construction started in 2019 and in the early Covid months of 2020. It is now a very smart three-bedroom, three-bathroom abode in the heart of Portobello, on a quiet cul de sac at the Clanbrassil Street end of the quarter.

The redbrick house, designed to fit in with the surrounding period properties, extends to about 150sq m (1,616sq ft) and is A3-rated. The property is seeking €875,000 through Felicity Fox.

It opens into a hall where there is oodles of storage for coats, shoes and pet paraphernalia. To the front is a TV room that links via a large utility through to the kitchen.

The kitchen is a big room accommodating a large island with a concrete-look quartz top. Across from it is the dining area and hidden behind a vertical half wall – that also serves as a surface to conceal the big TV from view – is the family room, where there is a sizeable, low-slung sofa.

Two walls of glazing illuminate the space and open out to a small but perfectly formed courtyard, big enough to dine al fresco. It’s also a lovely space to look out at.

The house is warmed by underfloor heating using a high-spec combi gas boiler. Underfoot is Onyx, a luxury vinyl plank, made from recycled concrete and laid in a herringbone pattern, from the Hardwood Flooring Company in Sandyford, that transfers heat really well.

The house has a huge amount of stylish, built-in storage, all designed and executed by Duggan, who trained as a carpenter.

In the TV room, for example, there’s a wall-hung media unit while he estimates there to be about seven cubic metres of storage in the utility area alone. All told he believes there is about 12 cubic sq m of storage at ground-floor level, excluding the handleless kitchen units. It will allow the greatest of clutterbugs to channel Mari Kondo.

The stairwell wall is painted a soft spring green and has a panelling effect that he executed using 9mm MDF offcuts. The secret to it looking as good as it does is that he sanded every corner and crevice between paint coats.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two really big doubles and a single. The main bedroom is to the back and has a trio of wardrobe doors set flush with the wall so they don’t dominate the space. It also features some art deco brown furniture from Niall Mullen, demonstrating how the property could also be furnished with more classical pieces. Plantation shutters, with privacy screens, shield all the uPVC sash windows, which are a soft chalk colour that works really well with the red brick. There’s a windowed shower en suite with a texture tile in a rich teal blue that contrasts with the black frame of the shower stall. It’s a blue that is used to colour block other areas within the house, such as a feature wall in the family room and part of the exterior too.

In the family bathroom he salvaged the pristine bath from a skip on one of his contracting jobs. “I had to sneak it out of there in bubble-wrap.” It’s now situated under a large skylight with its controls hidden from view. There’s also a large separate shower stall.