What do you do if your house is set very close to the road and you want to dial down traffic noise and orient the house away from a busy thoroughfare?
You flip the layout, says new mother Barbara Dooley, an interior architect with Mac Group, a construction fit-out company.
She and her husband bought number 342 Lower Kimmage Road, at the KCR end of the street, in 2018 paying €285,000 for it, according to the Property Price Register.
The address is also listed as having sold the previous year for €675,000 but this sale was to Seabren Developments and included a large garage to the rear where the housebuilder went on to construct Riversdale Mews, a trio of modernist-style new homes, accessed via a private gated lane.
A perk of this artisan-style, single-storey property is that it enjoys off-street parking within the new homes scheme to its rear, with two spaces directly adjacent to its pedestrian back gate.
Inside the house opens into a good-size hall. The first room you see is the family bathroom, which is also accessed from the main bedroom.
This hybrid space is where the sittingroom would have been, something most people would not have changed. Dooley has put a large wash/utility room here. A wall of Nazari, hand-glazed pink tiles add a pop of colour and draw the eye up from the washing machine. Sizeable and bright, it is set out in an L-shape with the large stall shower and the rest of the bathroom out of sight and to the front where they benefit from a window and any traffic noise is not too disruptive.
A walk-through closet takes you from the bathroom to the bedroom, which is painted in Hague Blue by Farrow and Ball. This room looks out on to a small internal courtyard of bare breeze blocks.
The living room and kitchen are both positioned to the back of the house to benefit from its southeast aspect and its more tranquil position within the property, Dooley explains.
The former is a good size and dual aspect thanks to light filtering through from the kitchen. Extending to almost 16sq m its focal point is a wood-burning stove set into a vintage redbrick surround. Here there is wall space here for two sofas and its soft neutral decor helps to create a really restful room.
The kitchen is to the back of the house. By repositioning the bathroom, which had been next to the garden, Dooley doubled the size of the rectangular kitchen and it opens directly out to the lawned and paved garden. This extends to 19sq m and has pedestrian rear access.
The smart, sleek gloss kitchen units were picked up secondhand and the countertop is Aria, a new product by Formica, that she describes as “a new age type of laminate that is cold to the touch to give a matte finish as if it were honed”. Floating open shelves above the counter give a slick-looking finish.
The room is painted in Railings, another F&B colour that appears as a dark blue in this setting. In pride of place is a Fisher & Paykel six-burner cooker, the Rolls Royce of ranges, which is included in the sale.
The island/breakfast counter is comprised of two Ikea units set end-to-end. These have open shelving on the cooking side, which gives you easy access to a plethora of pots and appliances without anyone on the other side of the counter ever seeing in. They’re also moveable should you want to create more floorspace when entertaining, says Dooley.
The end wall is glazed with sliding door access to the outside. There is room within the kitchen for a small dining table, around which four chairs have been set.
The house has a Ber of D2 and extends to about 72sq m (775sq ft); it has a further 13.5sq m of space in its attic room, which is set up as a second bedroom.
The property is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald with an asking price of €495,000.
