When Laura Haugh bought 74 Stillorgan Heath three years ago, the detached bay and brick-fronted house overlooking the Stillorgan Reservoir was to be a "forever home".
Haugh is the spokeswoman or “mum-in-residence” for MummyPages.ie, an Irish mother’s online forum that has some 700,000 unique visitors to its site.
Two years ago it launched in the UK and has now taken the number three position there; the longer established Mumsnet leads the way with two million unique visitors to its site.
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Set in a cul-de-sac she paid €660,000 for number 74 in 2013.
The property had already been extended, but she knocked down a couple of walls, including the one between the diningroom and the kitchen to make one big open-plan space with room for a family area.
She installed triple-glazed windows to the front added a wood burning stove and signed up to to Bord Gáis’s Hive programme, which allows you to control thermostats remotely. These simple changes turned a property with a D Ber rating into a B3 rated home.
Most of her other changes have been cosmetic. Clever fashion colour choices have knitted the spaces together.
In the Siematic kitchen she used Farrow & Ball Dimity and Neptune’s Driftwood on the built-in cabinets. The worktops are polished granite.
At the time her children James and Lucy were respectively aged three-and-a half and one and a half and she juggled her work at Mummypages with childcare, often using the house as a backdrop for shoots and videos for the site, including countless recipe videos.
The livingroom, to the front of the house, is painted in Dulux colours, French Clay above the dado rail and Country White below.
The diningroom is similarly painted with double doors leading through to the expansive breakfast room with a smart built-in bench.
Reservoir
There are four bedrooms in the house which measures 150sq m (1,615 sq ft). The main bedroom has a bay window and a shower en suite. From the back bedrooms there are nice views across the reservoir, a place where locals used to swim in the 1980s but has since been closed off and is patrolled.
The back garden isn’t overlooked and has a south-westerly aspect, a sunken trampoline and a playhouse.
Haugh’s working week is divided between Dublin and London. With her spending more time in the UK running the website’s British operation she is considering a move there to minimise travel time.
The property is asking €795,000 through agents DNG. There is off-street parking for several cars.
