Dublin 3: €4.75mNo less than seven doors lead out to to the garden of this spacious new house that comes with reduced stamp duty
Adelais at 51 Seafield Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3 has Edwardian good looks but in fact the 400sq m (4,500sq ft) house is just compplete, so new owners will pay stamp duty on the site cost alone rather than on the total amount.
Its expansive, cream-coloured spaces - filled with light and garden views - begin with a clear, front entrance vista to a "shed" at the end of the garden.
No ordinary shed either: two-storey and dry-stone built by a Leitrim stonemason, it's a statement to craftsmanship in the way that Adelais, with its myriad of hand-crafted detail, eco-friendly heating, water systems and range of the world's wood and stone in its building, is too.
A project dear to the heart of developer Robbie O'Brien (known for his bespoke, one-off houses around Clontarf), Adelais is built on a one-third of an acre site occupied by a 1930s bungalow until 18 months ago.
It has four bedrooms (three en suite), four reception rooms and a kitchen/breakfastroom. For sale by private treaty, the asking price is €4.75 million and the agent is Douglas Newman Good.
The Adelais style is in the detail: Italian tiles in bathrooms (put in place by Italian workers) have a silk-like finish, the drawingroom fireplace and a soaring wall behind the staircase are of Tiffany brick, the roof of is Bangor slate (and has solar panels), walnut floors with Navan carpet inset and, in a house O'Brien says was designed around its garden, seven doors lead out to the green, stone and timber landscape created by Jane Corkill. Her walks, pergolas and circular lawns have a variety of tree and shrub, including a couple of American miniature white oaks.
The house design is by architects Loughton Tyler Owens. A ground floor study has a limestone fireplace with interesting pewter inset. In the half-moon shaped kitchen/breakfastroom a wide window curves into the garden and, in the west-facing diningroom, windows and a glass door overlook a wall of cascading water. Lighting makes the most of this and other garden features.
The main bedroom, off a Velux-lit first floor landing, has a wide window with built-in seating overlooking the garden, a large en suite with sensory-lit mirrors (ensuring they'll never be touched by wet hands!) and a walk-in dressingroom with mahogany shelving.
Two of the other bedrooms are to the front, one is to the rear, all have built-in wardrobes. There is storage space in a large attic and parking spaces for four cars in the front, hedge-surrounded garden.
