Joyce Avenue is bungalow bliss territory. Located off Hainault Road in Foxrock, it features large bungalows that were built in the 1960s. Number 2 was purchased by its current owners in 1984.
Originally an L-shaped property, the house opens in to a roomy hall with pine double doors opening through to the open-plan living/dining-room.
This has a stone fire surround, typical of the 1970s, and a wood-burning stove, which was installed five years ago and has helped bring the house up to respectable B3 Ber rating.
The kitchen can be accessed from the dining-room and from the hall and was upgraded about eight years ago. It now has vanilla units and polished granite countertops. It’s a perfectly good eat-in kitchen but feels small by some of today’s open-plan designs. The next owner might like to integrate the kitchen and dining rooms.
The accommodation was designed around the one corridor. Then a four-bedroom house, the family extended the property in 2000, adding two roomy doubles that overlook the garden. Both have ensuite shower rooms. At the end of this new corridor, which runs parallel to the front hall, there is a games room that is home to a pool table and where the owners’ sons and their friends congregated before they flew the nest. It’s a space built for kids as off this is a utility room and access to the garden, a fine and private north-east-facing space with mature tall trees shielding you from the neighbours. Because of the low-set roof the garden gets sun all day. The back garden has a central circular patio and a large woodshed.
The house now measures 207sq m (2,228sq ft) but there is scope, subject to planning permission, to go up into the attic and add a second floor. Several neighbours across the road have done this but so far no one on the even-numbered side of the street has explored this option.
The owners are hoping to downsize and have already put the property on the market twice in the past few years, first at the height of the boom asking €1.8 million which was then reduced to €1.7 million. It came back onto the market in 2014 with an asking price of €995,000. This was reduced to €945,000 and further reduced to €885,000. Two years on the house is asking €795,000 through agents DNG.
