The couple who bought this four-bedroom house seven years ago planned to stay here forever and it was transformed with that in mind. Apart from its generous size and period features, it was also bought because it is among the last period houses before the airport and is on the road to Belfast, both requirements of their work.
But now it is work that sees the couple moving on, many years before they planned to, leaving a house that has been beautifully crafted.
The BER C1 period home, for sale at €1.25 million through Sherry FitzGerald, has been overhauled with great sensitivity. Work took 18 months, from replastering, insulating, strengthening joists and adding an extension, to decorating.
0 of 5
As period houses do, this offered surprises, from the intact floorboards revealed beneath the carpets to a lovely black fireplace under "about 40" layers of white paint. This is in one of the two ground-floor reception rooms connected through double doors. The walls are painted in Colortrend Stone Divine (the Divine range has been discontinued but there are other stone paints) and the woodwork (as it is throughout the house) is in French White. "My granddad had a thing about buying Irish," says the woman. "Which is why it's not Farrow and Ball. But it is a lovely chalky texture."
She also designed (and had made) the vast kitchen, with Aga, in the extension (down a level to maintain ceiling height).
The extension has rooflights, in its gull-wing, zinc roof, carrying the sun in after it has risen in the east at the front of the house, providing rays to raise sleepers in the main bedroom, through to the back garden in the west. This is accessed via floor-to-ceiling glass doors that fold right back, opening the kitchen to the world, and where the couple dined out until 9.30pm last weekend.
Surprisingly, it is silent here despite the main airport road being at the front. Beyond the planting there is parking for two cars at the back, reached via a lane.
On the first return is a bedroom overlooking the garden and a bathroom beside it lined in travertine. The attention to detail for a planned life here includes Duravit sanitary ware (such as the large bath and baby basin in this room), Myson radiators and Hansgrohe taps and rainshower heads (water-pumps were installed to create the high-pressure the German makers are used to). All bathroom mirrors are heated to stop steam and the floors are heated too.
There are two bedrooms on the next floor, one overlooking the garden, and another with bay window to the front. This used to be two bedrooms but the boxroom is now an en suite with large rainshower.
The bedroom and bathroom at the top of the house used to be behind a door which the couple took out: period banisters have been reinstated.
There is genuine sadness at leaving: “I hope the new person who lives here loves it and minds it as much as we did,” the owner says.
