Raglan Lane: €1.65m An architect designed D4 mews has been decorated with eclectic good taste - and is being sold with all its furnishings. Eoin Lyons reports
Sherry FitzGerald expects bids over €1.65 million for a newly-built mews house at 44 Raglan Lane in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 ahead of the auction on October 19th.
The 163sq m (1,750sq ft) three-bedroom house was designed by Mahoney Architecture and decorated by Merrion Square Interiors. With a mandate to be creative, the architects could use all their imaginative powers to execute the house, however high neighbours' eyebrows might arch in curiosity. The house is newly built on the site of one that was demolished.
To enter the house one passes through a gated courtyard, next to the garage. From the front door there is a view through the house to the rear garden.
Off the entrance hall is a guest toilet and staircase. Once through to the living areas, the taste of Helen Roden and Joe Ensko of Merrion Square Interiors is writ in three-dimensional shorthand, in the warmth of dark wood, the voluptuousness of curving custom-made furniture and the renunciation of clutter.
Calculated, yes, but ineffably chic. The furnishings that make up this decoration, an effortless mix of periods and styles more often seen in America or France than in Ireland, will be sold with the property.
The interior designers had some very special architecture with which to work: the ground floor is divided into two spaces running the width of the house that are separated by two small glass-walled internal gardens.
The dining and kitchen area are near the entrance. At the back is the livingroom, with a door to the garden. Mahoney Architecture designed a flexible, bright home that seems larger than its floor area would indicate and every detail seems flawlessly finished.
The kitchen runs along one wall and into a galley where a door opens to the front courtyard, which catches the morning sun.
All appliances are by De Dietrich and the walls are covered with a suede-like material. On the other side of the room is the dining area.
The adjacent livingroom, reached by passing between the two glass "cubes", has an earthy palette and proves subtle textures can be as effective as wild-eyed patterns.
The fireplace here is matched by another outside, one of a number of complementary indoor/outdoor features - for example, the same stone flooring runs from the courtyard to the inside, where it is heated from beneath. Meanwhile, upstairs off a large landing are three bedrooms. Two have bathrooms en suite and there is a separate bathroom next to the third.
While none are particularly large, each bedroom is decorated so lushly, it hardly matters: specially designed wardrobes, headboards and nightstands are worked around a different colour theme. The overall effect in each is how one might imagine a suite aboard a 1930s ocean liner.
