Explaining exactly what you want to someone about to decorate your room can be a tricky business. When the owner of 8 Proby Square in Blackrock commissioned an artist to create a dramatic paint treatment for her formal diningroom, the brief was admirably short and wonderfully eccentric. “Distressed contessa” was the instruction – and “distressed” as in impecunious, definitely not unhappy.
The result is quite something. The walls are painted to look like the crumbling walls of an ancient palazzo, a large leopard with a jewelled collar lounges over the fireplace, a colourful bird is on one wall and the ceiling, painted to look like a dreamy sky, is dotted with tiny lights to make a constellation. This diningroom is on the first floor and interconnects with the fine formal drawingroom to the front – it’s easy to believe the owners when they say it’s a wonderful place for a party.
Period features
0 of 9
The tall three storey over garden house is in a terrace of six – four of which, including number 8, were built in the mid 19th century. The owners, an accountant and an interior designer, work in the two-roomed office at garden level and when they moved in, 18 years ago, the house was in flats. While a long list of period features were intact, bringing it back to family use involved a great deal of basic renovation work – it was only after that that the extravagant paint treatment began. As well as drama in the diningroom there are large murals of Russian icons decorating the entrance hall.
The three double bedrooms are at the top of the house – one is en suite; the family bathroom is in the return; those formal reception rooms are at first floor, while off the hall is a family room to the front (a fourth bedroom by the agent’s reckoning) and the kitchen is to the rear. A metal staircase leads down from this level to the garden.
There is planning permission to extend the return – which is something new owners might do. And if they don’t want the office at ground level it could be converted, subject to planning permission, into an apartment, or, if the staircase was reinstated, reincorporated into the house. They will also most likely update the kitchen and bathroom and redecorate from top to bottom – whether the murals will stay is anyone’s guess.
The owners, meanwhile, have their own plans. The garden is currently divided by a white picket fence to indicate the site for their new mews house which is still in the design phase. 8 Proby Square, off Carysfort Avenue is for sale through Janet Carroll for €1,425,000.
