Former bedsit in Kilmainham turned bright family home for €895,000

A four-minute walk from the Rialto Luas stop sits 44 Mountshannon Road, an end-of-terrace three-bed redbrick built around 1908.

When the current owners bought the property in the 1980s, each room was a bedsit and the house needed complete renovation. Painstakingly, over five years, the couple donned their overalls after their day jobs to tackle the job of transforming the property into a bright family home with a floor area of 174sq m (1877sq ft).

There is not an inch of the house its owners haven’t worked on personally, and the care with which its original features have been restored adds charm and personality.

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They once found a letter dated 1943 under the floorboards addressed to a man who happened to knock on the door a few years ago to see what had become of the house where he used to live. The owners, who are hoping to downsize, have put their home on the market through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €895,000.

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From the gated front courtyard, a step brings you into the narrow entrance hall, facing the stairs on the left and the reception area of the open-plan kitchen/diningroom straight ahead.

To the right of the entryway there is a sittingroom with upgraded wooden sash windows – the Ber is C3 – an open fire and its original fireplace, complete with emerald-green tiles. The ceiling coving is original throughout and the centre rose was restored by hand.

Double doors lead to the dining area, which also has its original fireplace and restored wooden floorboards. Three steps lead down to the contemporary kitchen, which has grey wooden units, white stone countertops and a large island housing the sink as well as the dishwasher and storage underneath.

There is underfloor heating in this part of the house, and the room is flooded with light from a large rectangular skylight overhead.

The kitchen faces on to a reception area which has a bronze wood-burning stove. There is a second dining area lit by another skylight and French doors that lead out to a small, paved, north-facing courtyard, which gets sun in the mornings and late in the evening.

The owner said she wanted the courtyard to be like a framed image that could be seen from the front reception room to create a flow through the ground floor of the home.

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Off the dining area is a utility room with lots of storage, and a shower room. This space used to be a shed before it was renovated in 2016 as part of the extension which included the open-plan kitchen/diningroom. The shed to the rear houses an upgraded boiler system.

Up the first flight of stairs is the smallest of the three bedrooms which has potential to be an office and, like the other bedrooms, has a restored cast-iron fireplace. What was once the hot press now works as generous built-in storage. Next to this is the main shower room which is short on space but still manages to fit a good-sized shower.

The second double bedroom has a built-in wooden wardrobe with a handy pull-out feature. The main bedroom is a generous size and gets plenty of light from three sash windows at the front of the house.

Another staircase, added to replace a Stira, leads to the attic conversion, with ample built-in storage along the sides of the room. You can see the clock tower at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham from the large Velux window. The Memorial Gardens are also in the locality, as well as primary and secondary schools.