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For the second time in 18 months a “for sale” sign is up on 3 Whitebeam Avenue. At the end of January 2020 the owners who were trading up put their extended semi-d in the Crampton-built estate in Clonskeagh, Dublin 14, on the market. Then Covid hit, and while many vendors at the time decided to hold firm and continue with the sales campaign despite the severe lockdown restrictions – and typically with the rise in the market in past months selling well and quickly – they decided to take the house off the market.
Since then it has been rented to a family in the area who needed short-term accommodation while they were having their own home renovated. They have now left and the house is back on the market, selling through Lisney, asking €1.1 million – nearly €100,000 less than the pre-Covid price.
It’s clear from the front gate that the 1930s house – with its striking chequerboard red brickwork in the two-storey side extension – has been smartly reworked.
Limerick architect Morgan Flynn of AgletArchitecture was responsible for the renovation of the now 155sq m (1,668sq ft) home, marrying striking contemporary details with the home’s original features. There are four double bedrooms – two original (with pretty fireplaces) and two in the new side extension. The boxroom was converted into a bathroom while to the front a new shower room is adjacent to the main bedroom.
At ground floor the view from the front door is through to the landscaped back garden via a floor-to-ceiling glazed screen at the end of the hall – another clear sign to visitors that the house has been thoroughly modernised. The BER is C3.
To the right, the front reception room is largely untouched, down to its original 1930s tile fireplace – except for new windows in the bay. It opens into the rear room, subtly changed by the addition of a small extension and a large glazed screen in the side wall that looks into an inner courtyard that effectively links the old and the new, and beyond that into the kitchen in the side extension.
In the spacious eat-in kitchen one wall is mostly glass with wire supports for a vine which makes for a leafy green screen in the summer. Off the kitchen to the front are a shower room, a utility and a children’s play area.
Interesting architectural details range from the half-doors in the extension and kitchen to the copper gargoyle gutters to channel rain from the kitchen’s flat roof into a stone trough in the courtyard.
The front garden has parking for a couple of cars, as well as a bike store.