This New England-style house, built around the peak of the Celtic Tiger, was designed with great attention to detail and modelled very much on classic east coast US homes using the best of materials. Outside, the house has a pitched roof, timber-clad walls, balconies opening off bedrooms, a large sandstone patio in the L-shaped rear garden and even a picket fence.
Inside, floors are wide-plank solid oak, ceilings are high and either coffered or tongue-and-groove timber, walls are part-panelled and nearly all are painted white.
The couple who bought it in 2010 have made very few changes, except for painting the main bedroom blue. The house was a Celtic Tiger build in 2007/2008,when the then owners got planning permission to build two houses on the site of an old one near the bottom of Violet Hill, a lane off Church Road in Killiney.
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They put it on the market in 2009 for €2.95 million; it eventually sold for €1.5 million in November 2010. Now Serenity, Violet Hill, Church Road, Killiney, Co Dublin, a 357 sq.m (3,850 sq ft) detached five-bed is back on the market over a decade later for €1.795 million.
The five-bed was designed by Lawrence and Long Architects. It is a house built for entertaining, with the downstairs rooms – drawing room, living room/dining room and open-plan kitchen/breakfast/family room – opening into eachother and out into the garden through many French windows. Inside, concealed sliding doors can close the rooms off from each other. There’s underfloor heating throughout and a central music system in most of the main rooms.
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There’s plenty of storage in the house, starting right from the L-shaped front hall, where there are closets and storage beneath seating under the space for hanging coats. The kitchen/breakfast/family room, with a vaulted tongue-and-groove timber ceiling, is up a few steps at the back of the house. Two glazed walls, with five sets of double doors, open into the L-shaped back garden. A large pale quartz-topped island unit has two Belfast sinks. A pantry – once billed as the bar – opens off the kitchen, and from there into a good-sized utility room.
There's a very smart black-tiled wet room with a wide step-in shower off the hall, opposite the door into the long drawingroom/diningroom, which opens through glazed double doors into the gardens front and back. Newcastle Design made the fitted bookshelves here and all the cabinetry in the house; a smaller livingroom also opens into the garden.
Up a steep flight of stairs, there are four double bedrooms off the top landing, three of them en suite and with built-in wardrobes; a single bedroom opens off a landing part way up the stairs.
The L-shaped rear garden has a large sandstone patio a few steps down from decking around the edge of the house and a decent-sized lawn. There’s room to park several cars in the driveway.
Serenity is near the bottom of Violet Hill, a lane which backs onto Killiney golf course off busy Church Road. There’s pedestrian access to the golf course off nearby Balure Lane.