Classic build with new feel on quiet Rathgar stretch for €1.925m

A detached five-bed house located almost opposite the Russian embassy on quiet Orwell Road in Rathgar looks like a new build from the outside and the inside too. But Cranmore, at 175 Orwell Road, was originally built in 1963, then completely renovated and extended in 2008.

It's a bright, airy contemporary five-bed with landscaped gardens whose owners bought it after it had been transformed, and it remains in walk-in condition. The house, mostly painted French white, was redesigned by architects Brazil Lohan and fitted out to a high standard: solid oak doors, for example, have a walnut inlay and all the bathrooms are smart, with marble-tiled floors and walls.

Now, with three daughters grown, the owners are downsizing. The 242sq m (2,610sq ft) five-bed is for sale for €1.925 million through Sherry FitzGerald.

There are two electronic gates in to the gravelled front garden, where there’s room to park six cars. The front door opens in to a wide bright hall with views straight through to the back garden.

There are three reception rooms off the hall, floored with polished timber like most of the downstairs rooms: on the right is a drawing room with box bay window, a wall-mounted gas fire and ceiling coving; on the left is a living room with a box bay window at the front and marble fireplace with cast-iron inset. Double doors open from here to a smaller family room and there are French windows from here into the garden.

A large, opaque glass sliding door opens from the family room into the wide open-plan kitchen/breakfast/dining room at the rear of the house. Floor-to-ceiling corner windows and French windows in the dining area make the whole space very bright. The kitchen, floored with tile effect black-and-white vinyl, has pale polished granite countertops, an island with lots of storage and timber units. There’s a walk-in shelved pantry at the back of the kitchen and a utility room in a side passage with access to the front and back gardens. A small and convenient desk is built into a corner of the kitchen.

Upstairs two of the five bedrooms – four doubles and a single – have en suite bathrooms. There’s a dressing room on the way into the bedroom – there’s plenty of storage in this and in the other bedrooms – and an en suite with a shower off it.

Outside, the back garden has been landscaped to a modern style: a lawn with a granite border is edged by bamboo, bay trees and a variety of grasses. There’s a granite patio just to the rear of the house and a decked area at the end with Himalayan birch trees cutting into it. Fencing conceals a garden shed area behind.

A pedestrian passage immediately beside the house leads to a path that runs through Milltown Golf Club: more like a country lane, it leads on to Milltown Road beside the Dropping Well pub, just a 10-minutes walk from Cranmore.