A renovated house a short stroll from Dalkey village provides a masterclass in making the most of a relatively small space. The recently-renovated semidetached bungalow, one of nine on this quiet road parallel to the Dart line in Dalkey, is a very smart 154sq m (1,658sq ft) three-bed with a separate 30sq m (323sq ft) studio apartment in a repurposed container in its garden.
In redesigning the house, built in the 1950s, the owner wanted a cube with lots of light and architects Optimise Design have given him that. Number 6 Sorrento Drive has a large open-plan kitchen/dining/family room at the back of the house with a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass windows/doors opening on to the granite back patio. Other striking features include the main bedroom on the first floor, recently redesigned by interior design studio Agata, and of course the container apartment, of which more later.
Number 6 Sorrento Drive, a 184sqm (1,980sq ft) house (including the studio) is for sale for €1.65 million through Vincent Finnegan Estate Agents. The owner paid €905,000 for the house six years ago and spent another €450,000 renovating it. It has a B3 Ber. With three adult children living at home, he and his wife are upsizing and hope to move to a house nearer to the water in Dalkey.
The design of the house enhances a feeling of spaciousness: the ground floor has a herringbone pale oak floor throughout and walls and built-in units are mostly white, pale grey or charcoal grey. The front hall opens through glass doors into the open plan kitchen/diningroom/family room at the back, opening on to a wide back patio. It’s smart, with a wall of white presses and worktops in the grey and white Kube kitchen, with two large rooflights over the dining/sitting area. There’s a smaller, snug livingroom at the front of the house, with walls painted deep grey.
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Other downstairs accommodation includes two bedrooms, one single, one double, with lots of built in storage. (There are also pull-out understairs drawers.) The smart family bathroom has a grey-and-white tiled floor and white subway tiles.
The main bedroom upstairs designed by Agata has grey walls, white ceiling, gold soft furnishings and a cream carpet – and a cleverly-designed walk-in wardrobe behind the bed, screened by a timber partition; there’s also a built-in desk area. The en suite shower room has the same smart fitout as the family bathroom.
The container studio apartment is the real surprise in this property: it sits in the garden beside the main house, separated from it by a gated side passage. It’s long and narrow of course and has everything but a kitchen in it. Charcoal grey on the outside, it’s entered through floor-to-ceiling glass double doors. Inside, all the walls are charcoal grey too; the floor, like that in the main house, is pale herringbone oak. Made to order by a Polish company, FlexiCube, it’s fully insulated and has underfloor heating.
The doors open into a small livingroom with a narrow floor-to-ceiling window and then to a narrow passage that leads to a double bedroom at the far end. Beside the passage there’s a bathroom with shower and a small utility room with washer and dryer. Because it’s under 30sq m and can be moved, it didn’t need planning permission the owner says. It’s an adult son’s apartment at present; it was used as a home office during lockdown.
The back patio is the back garden: there’s plenty of dining space here, next to the fence that runs behind it. It looks down over the roofs of houses below on Sorrento Road. The front garden is gravelled and has room to park up to five cars behind a low electronic gate. There’s a snug space on the porch beside the front door that fits a couple of chairs, a nice spot for an evening wine. The owner says that the road, a cul-de-sac, is very private. Yet it’s just beyond Dalkey Dart station and a short walk past Finnegan’s pub to the village’s main street.
