Large family home in Ranelagh will put a spring in your step

The owners of 24 Merton Road moved in on their 10th wedding anniversary, upsizing from a smaller house in nearby Merton Drive in Ranelagh to accommodate their growing family.

They paid £6,750 for 24 Merton Road – a big price at the time and over £2,000 more than the price paid for another house on the road less than a year previously. So significant price jumps are not unknown on this sought-after Dublin 6 road which is at the top of Cowper Road, parallel to the Luas line.

Fifty years later the couple is on the move again, downsizing from their 255sq m/2,422sq ft, five-bedroom house. Sherry FitzGerald are the agents and the price for the 1920s semi-detached house is €1.75 million.

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The owners know that whoever buys will make a lot of changes just as they did. Among their changes were converting the integrated garage into a fourth reception room on the left hand side of the wide hall. In more recent years, they reconfigured the scullery and outhouses at the back to create a bright living room off the kitchen and looking out on to the garden.

The two main reception rooms, bay window to the front, interconnect and they feature a lovely sprung timber floor as the house’s first owners were keen dancers and specified the unusual feature.

Upstairs the five bedrooms are three doubles and two singles. The bathroom and loo have been updated over the years in terms of fittings and decoration but they have been left as they were originally built as two separate rooms.

Most new owners on the road have knocked these together and several have also gone up into the attic – there’s good space on the landing – to add an extra bedroom.

New owners will also update the decor. The grey bathroom fittings are back in fashion but the polyester tiles on several ceilings are unlikely to ever come back. They may also consider extending the kitchen as there is plenty of space at the rear in the 30m long garden.

The back garden is wider than several of the neighbours' on this side of Merton Road due to a strip of land once owned by the ESB and now incorporated into the mature back garden.

It has a timber deck accessed from the kitchen, a rear reception room and a small sun room and a large vegetable patch. There is off-street parking.