The couple who bought Dromore, a large Edwardian house in the Burnaby area of Greystones in 2006, did extensive structural work on it without extending the already large (301sq ft/3,240sq ft) property. “Every ceiling came down, every floor came up. We installed a geothermal heating system, not so common 15 years ago, and put 100mm insulation panels on walls. We installed Marvin double-glazed windows and solar panels and raised ceilings,” say the owners.
There is underfloor heating throughout the ground floor and in the bathroom on the first landing upstairs. The owners are thrilled the home has a B3 Ber, which is hard to achieve in a period house. As well as all this, they stripped paint from doors back to their original timber, exposed brick walls in various parts of the house and retained original period features – such as the large timber and cast-iron fireplaces – wherever they could.
They bought the house on 0.44 hectares (1.1 acres) with a view to applying for planning permission to build one or two houses on the land, “but the market collapsed, so we didn’t do it”. Instead, they cleared the huge front lawn of trees and let their three sons and their friends play soccer, Gaelic and rugby on it. As well as the football pitch, the boys had a den in two garages at the back and a large family room at their disposal in the house.
Dromore is a comfortable lived-in family home and “a fantastic party house” for their children, say the owners. With only one son left at home, the couple are downsizing.
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New buyers may look at the property’s development potential with a view to selling off part of the site, they say. Two neighbouring houses on Portland Road were built in an Edwardian style about 13 years ago, and there are two more in a similar style behind them. The house is within the Burnaby Architectural Conservation Area, which has a residential zoning with a density of four houses per acre.
Dromore, a five-bed arts-and-crafts house built in 1906, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €2.8 million. The owners bought it at the height of the market for €3.3 million and spent €800,000 revamping it, so they won’t get their money back. But they’re philosophical about this: they used to live up the road in the Burnaby and sold their bungalow there in 2006 (with planning permission for a second storey) for a then high price of €1.8 million. They plan to stay in the Burnaby, where one of the owners grew up, and which the other – “a blow-in from Rathfarnham” – loves as a “friendly, welcoming, safe community”.
Dromore is a wide house, with a typical large Edwardian squarish entrance hall, with a large timber mantelpiece and a coal-effect gas fire set into an exposed brick wall. Off it, there’s a toilet and a good-sized well-fitted-out home office. The pale marble-tiled floor extends to the kitchen-breakfastroom at the other side of the house. This space is bright, with double glass doors opening into the garden: it has cream timber units, a Rangemaster oven, Belfast sink and a curved oak-topped island. There’s a pantry off the kitchen and, off the family room at the back of the house, a utility room.
Off the hall at the front of the house is the wide timber-floored living-diningroom, where the owners put an RSJ steel beam into a wide arch that separates the living from the dining area. A sweep of windows look over the front garden and a small door opens on to the veranda outside. On the other side of the front hall is a large timber-floored family room; there’s a door here into a small courtyard.
The layout of the house is unusual: stairs lead to a landing at the back of the house where there’s a modern fully tiled bathroom with a shower and free-standing oval bath, next to a separate shower room and large hot press. Up a few more stairs is the wide top landing, with a long exposed brick wall and two roof windows. The three bedrooms off it are doubles, all fitted with good wardrobes and with large black cast-iron fireplaces. The one in the main bedroom is set into an exposed brick wall and the room is bright, with a five-paned window overlooking the front garden. The main bedroom has an en suite and a walk-in wardrobe.
There’s a fourth double bedroom up more stairs. The last short set of stairs forms a bridge over the first-floor landing and leads to another smaller double bedroom at the front of the house, which has good views of the Wicklow hills.
