The couple who bought a three-storey house in one of Dún Laoghaire’s newest neighbourhoods five years ago were happy with their brand new home, but wanted to tailor it to their own tastes. They added colour to the cream-and-white palette of the house, original wallpaper designs in some rooms, panels in the front hall, and “smartified” it.
One of the owners – who works in tech – connected the thermostat to every radiator in the house, for example, and “geofenced” it so that the heat goes off when they leave the house and comes back on when they’re within a certain radius. Like all recently built homes, its Ber is A2. Lights in hallways and landings come on automatically, there are security cameras in the kitchen, and the front door has one of the increasingly popular video doorbells.
Now 59 Roseland Avenue, Cualanor, Dún Laoghaire, a three-storey end-of-terrace five-bed extending to 205sq m (2,260sq ft), is for sale through DNG for €1.1 million. It's among the first houses built in Cualanor, the large Cosgrave scheme of energy-efficient houses and apartments built on the former Dún Laoghaire golf course, launched in 2017, when the couple paid €750,000 for it. The house, elegantly furnished in modern style and in walk-in condition, is conveniently located near the Tivoli Road side of Cualanor, in walking distance of Dún Laoghaire town and very close to the large green space and playground at the centre of the development.
The smart front door (it opens without a key) leads into a hall painted a mint green shade (Dulux Renaissance) with the part-panelled walls painted white. On the right is the room that used to be the couple’s living room but has since been turned into a very pretty playroom for their two-year-old daughter. It has commercial-grade herringbone laminate flooring and two tall windows. There’s a rectangular panelled window in the wall between hall and living room, created by the owners.
The open-plan kitchen/dining room/family room at the back of the house is bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows and double doors opening to the back garden. Kitchen units are painted a striking deep blue; the quartz-topped island unit and worktops match the pale grey tiled floor. Most striking of all is the bold wallpaper mural of toucans in a jungle setting on a wall behind the dining table. There’s a good-sized utility room – with a sink, cupboards and shelving – off the kitchen, and a guest toilet off the hall.
Oak stairs have an original and attractive feature – contrasting strips of patterned lino stuck to the stair risers. Upstairs, all the rooms have commercial-grade oak laminate floors.
The family living room – called an entertainment or media room – is on the first floor, along with two bedrooms. It’s a bright room with two large windows overlooking the road to the front and has built-in shelving along one wall facing a wall dominated by an 85-inch TV. “It’s staying” says the owner, because it was so difficult getting it into the house in the first place.
The smaller of the two bedrooms on this floor is prettily furnished as a study-cum-dressing room; walls of the double guest bedroom are cleverly painted in contrasting colours of blue and grey, separated by a thin band of white. Two smart family bathrooms – one on this floor, one on the top floor – are part-tiled.
There are three bedrooms on the top floor, but a home office has been installed in the large double at the front of the house that could be the main bedroom. It’s a handsomely decorated room, with geometric-pattern wallpaper on one wall. It has a large en suite shower room and a good-sized walk-in wardrobe.
The two bedrooms at the back have deep Velux windows (with blackout blinds): the main bedroom is painted a deep blue; the child’s room beside it is pretty in pink and grey.
An attic accessed by pull-down stairs is floored and has lights, sockets and shelving.
Outside, there’s a patio leading to a decent-sized lawn, bordered by trees that include an apple and a fig tree. At the front, there are two designated parking spaces and an electric car charger. The service fee – which covers security and bins in the development – is €650 a year.
The couple want a house with more space around it, and are planning to move to a new Cosgrave development of luxury detached houses, Thormanby Hill, in Howth.