Sutton seaside cottage with a big heart for €850k

Sutton in Dublin 13 offers ease of access to a range of amenities, including schools, shops and most of all the sea.

Number 22 Church Road is a double-fronted cottage whose single-storey front belies its size. The property last came to market in 2015 and sold for €365,000, according to the property price register. Its new owner, architect Adam Heffernan, then felled every wall bar the gable and front facades to rebuild it almost from scratch, triple-glazing and insulating it throughout.

The front is now covered in a nap-finish render, and the cottage extended to the rear to create a modern, three-bedroom home of about 120sq m (about 1,292sq ft).

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The end-terrace residence now has three double bedrooms, with one on either side of the hall, with original cottage windows and new Velux windows washing their interiors in light.

The third bedroom is to the rear of the left side of the home and it shares a Jack and Jill-style bathroom with a bedroom to the front.

This gives the main bedroom almost full use of the separate family bathroom, whose walls and floor are covered in large-format porcelain tiles.

The layout creates a clear divide between the accommodation and living areas and also factors in a utility room where laundry can take place out of sight and sound.

The rear of the property opens into a sizeable, bespoke kitchen of gloss white units with a grey trim. A reflective glass silver tile with silver grouting, from TileStyle, is a feature of the splashback and it reflects back much of the sunlight that streams into this room. This area is very much the heart of the house and extends to about 28sq m (about 301sq ft).

Fresh thinking

Beyond here is where the architect’s fresh thinking is most apparent. He says that, in his last home, he made the mistake of having an open-plan kitchen breaking through to the familyroom. With two kids, he says it was “a disaster”.

While the children are now grown up, this subsequent property has a private break-out space, a livingroom, itself about 25sq m, where he says you can “close the door and be entirely separate”. This room overlooks the landscaped garden, which has a westerly aspect.

Both the kitchen and the livingroom have lofty 3.5m ceiling heights but have been cleverly designed so you won’t see their pitched roofs from the front. The property is wheelchair accessible throughout, and features bespoke internal doors and walnut engineered flooring.

A useful side passage currently stores at least one kayak (for carrying just 50m to the sea).

Situated just off Greenfield Road, the house is located across the road from St Fintan’s church and within a five-minute walk of the shops at Sutton Cross. There is off-street parking for one car. The cottage is on the market seeking €850,000.