A sickening door-slam, two crestfallen faces, a three-way gasp. “It’s okay,” says the owner of number 7 Beatty’s Avenue, by the River Dodder’s south bank in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. “My neighbour has a key. I’ll be back in a sec,” and off she goes: across the gravel, out the gate and along the terrace to call on her friend.
It’s illustrative of the neighbourhood feel of this peaceful pocket, which runs perpendicular to the shops and pubs including Hemingways and Crowes opposite the RDS, and parallel to the river walk where other neighbours include foxes, swans and watchful herons.
It’s a short walk to the Dart at Lansdowne Road, the lid of the Aviva is visible from the gate, and with dozens of cafes and restaurants in close range, the owner says she never got around to replacing her car when it packed up a few years ago. Other amenities nearby include schools, sports clubs, Sandymount Strand and Herbert Park.
In 1998 the house was described in The Irish Times as a two-bed house of 650sq ft with an asking price of IR£220,000 (about €270,000) and a “patio-garden offering space to extend to the rear”. On buying the two-bed in 1999, the owner says, she considered it “a grand cottage with a green door” but she knew what she could do with it, and so in 2002 she enlarged and reoriented it to capitalise on the light. Now with a bright, crisp finish – refreshed in 2018 – and a floor area of 89sq m (958sq ft), the house is on the market through Colliers, seeking €810,000.
Out the front, new composite decking steps up through raised beds, with a table and chairs in line with the afternoon sun – and in sight of passing cyclist friends in need of socially distanced refreshments.
On finally opening the soft green, partly glazed front door you notice that while every line in the house is straight, there is a pleasing circularity to its features. The opaque glass in the front door is repeated in the upper panels of the internal doors, and in the sliding wardrobes of the main bedroom. The original glass inserts in the door from the hall to the living room map to the lines of northern light that slat across the wooden floor from four Veluxes over the dining area. Shelves inspired by a Conran book decorate the alcove by the stove, and a matching set seems simultaneously to support and float on a bedroom wall.
To the left off the hall is a cute, snug double bedroom; external insulation added in 2018 brings the Ber to C1. To the right, in what was originally the second bedroom, is a fully tiled bathroom, with opaque glass in the window and in the shower doors.
Next on the right is the calm, airy main bedroom, which has the feel of a boutique hotel, and the last wardrobe door conceals and reveals the ingenuity of the owner’s en suite design. As well as a bath, there is a shower – the same shower as in the front bathroom – accessed, Jack and Jill style, through another of her opaque doors.
The bedroom, which was originally the living room, opens out through east-facing French doors to the patio garden, which has more composite decking underfoot and timber cladding on the side walls. The end wall is painted a soft grey-brown to blend in with the brickwork of the Dodder View Cottages, around the corner.
A little cupboard stores coats and boxes, just before a nook for a desk. Beyond this, the kitchen is spacious but unobtrusive, with clutter-free black granite worktops; everything is hidden in the dark grey cupboards and a Fisher and Paykel dish drawer.
All these lovely touches coalesce in the long living room, its pitched roof a lofty surprise after the cottagey sense elsewhere. The eye is drawn to the wood-burning stove at the far end, the logs stacked ready for cosy evenings, the velvet furnishings lending soft elegance and the wooden table in the perfect spot.
Again the owner’s feel for futureproofing has paid off, commissioning grey alu-clad south-facing sliding garden doors in 2002, before almost anyone else had thought of them, and adding to the timeless design. It would be interesting to see the before and after of her next project.
