For Gráinne Wynne, owner of Beautiful South, a fashion boutique in Rathmines, 2020 was a difficult year. It started with her father having to go into a nursing home. Then the pandemic happened and then she separated from her husband.
Divorced and with two children to house, and a finite amount of money with which to do so, she had to box clever to find them a new home.
Like many of us, she was looking for something a bit special that she could make her own. She wanted a contemporary look, and had a penchant for poured concrete – as anyone who has popped into her shop on Castlewood Avenue in the Swan Centre, Rathmines, and coveted the brands on the hangers there will know. The place looks cool, but the atmosphere is warm and welcoming. It’s not the kind of place to sniffily look you up and down for daring to cross its threshold.
She wanted a home that looked and felt similarly, and viewed about 100 properties in her attempt to find it.
She even got as far as going sale agreed on a small house in Killiney. It had a big back garden with the potential to extend into it – subject of course to having the money to do so. Building costs put her off. And while she thought she wanted a garden, she realised that she didn’t have the time to attend to it. These combined reasons meant she didn’t go through with the sale.
Instead, she followed her heart. Discreetly hidden off Main Street in Blackrock village, Co Dublin, she found a mews of about 118sq m. Originally configured as a commercial office, it had come to the market with residential planning permission.
When she saw the space, her heart missed a beat. “My friends thought I was crazy,” she recalls. So did her mother. So much so that she wrote her a letter listing some 20 reasons not to buy it. She was in favour of her buying something more conventional, she recalls.
Wynne understood her concerns. “Working in retail is a massive struggle. I had a finite amount of money and no pension,” she explains.
“I went with her the first day she visited it,” her 88-year-old mother Marie Wynne says. “When you want something, you look at the plusses. You don’t see the minuses.”
For the matriarch, one of the minuses was the number of stairs in the property. It didn’t have a garden either, she recalls, and her daughter Gráinne had wanted an outdoor green space. “If you’re a mother it’s your job to point out snags. Once it’s done, it’s done.”
Laid out over four floors, with one room on each, the property’s layout meant Wynne could easily get her 10,000 steps a day in ascending and descending the spiral staircase that forms the spine of the building. Her mother had also flagged this issue. “She might need a pulley to get up the stairs in the future,” she laughs.
Mother and daughter toured the area after that first viewing, walking down by the sea, and she realised all the village had to offer, including a wide expanse of Dublin Bay in lieu of a green space.
The 88-year-old viewed the refurbishment for the first time only on Christmas Day. “It’s terrific,” she says, having now climbed up to the second floor on both December 25th and again on December 31st. “It’s definitely right for her.”
She was over the moon, says Gráinne. “She came back on New Year’s Eve for a party and loved the vibe.” Friends who were equally sceptical were “blown away” by the refurbishment, Gráinne recalls.
Fees on commercial buildings
Change of use planning permission had already been granted thanks to a design submitted by Node Architects on behalf of the vendor before they brought the unit to market. In the application letter, available to view on the planning website of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the practice noted “that with the increase of opportunities for people to work from home came a decrease for demand for small office buildings such as this one”.
Constructed in 2000 with ocean-liner-like oval windows and slightly curved walls, the four-story cedar-clad space had been vacant, the firm pointed out. In an acute housing shortage, a conversion to residential would create a new dwelling unit in the centre of Blackrock village, contributing to its vibrancy. As it was unoccupied, Wynne didn’t have to pay any rates.
But commercial stamp duty was an issue. A good conveyancing solicitor was essential, Wynne says, when buying this type of property. Based in Carrick-on-Shannon, Carol McCormack Solicitors pointed out that while the planning had been applied for it hadn’t yet been acted on. The works and changes to the property would commence only once Wynne was the owner. “So legally, it was still viewed as a commercial unit, which had Revenue implications,” McCormack, explains. “Commercial stamp duty is at a rate of 7.5 per cent, rather than the residential 1 per cent rate.”
Once planning is acted on there is a possibility of a rebate, she adds.
With house-hunters casting their eyes wider to try to buy alternative options to the restricted stock levels of more traditional residential homes, McCormack feels we’re going to see more of this.
The home is accessed through a vehicular arch and while the office had the rights to parking outside, the change-of-use application made the point that this space could be used as an outdoor terrace,
In the same application Node Architects’ rationale was that “given the location of the building with easy access to many public transport modes, it is proposed to convert this parking space to an outdoor terrace serving the new dwelling. This will contribute to the open space requirements for the new house and there are additional balconies and terraces on each of the upper levels of the building which also add to this.”
But, having committed to the purchase and the additional stamp duty fees, Wynne was left with a really tight budget to do all the works. It needed plumbing throughout, to fit the principal bathroom on the first-floor level, a shower en suite in one of the two bedrooms and a guest wc off her room. These have been fitted with black sanitary ware from the Bathroom Boutique.
The electrics also needed attention. The bathrooms were originally server rooms and all their fuseboards had to be relocated, explains Greg Murray of Carne Electrical. “There was also much rerouting of data cables.”
The property has two bedrooms and a mezzanine level. There is a charcoal and an off-white palette throughout, with microcement floors and on some walls, supplied by Stone Seal. There is a tiny terrace on each floor which gives access to outside space.
Each room is a long rectangle shape that suits contemporary living, especially when zoning an open-plan kitchen diner. While Node Architects had suggested installing it on the mezzanine top floor, she opted for the floor below, because it had the largest footprint.
The mezzanine level has been glassed in to dim down sound and heat transference.
She retained all the fire doors, made by O’Carroll Joinery when the property was constructed. Greenery from Urban Plant Life, Howbert & Mays, Diarmuid Gavin at Dunnes Stores and Windy Ridge populates each floor.
“I could see the potential. I believe in taking something simple and making it beautiful,” she says. She had a lot of help from Irish Conservatories and Building Services, and from her best friend Rod Hayden, who most recently helped her char her timber stair treads.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last four years and would feel absolutely confident doing another refurbishment,” she concludes. So much so that she’s named the property Athena, after the Greek goddess of wisdom.
There are still some minor elements to tease out. Living so centrally and beside food businesses means that the commercial bins are being fenced in, and an industrial ventilator that is making more noise than she’d like is being sorted, she says. “The place had never been residential before and we’re working together to remedy it.”
irishconservatories.com; beautiful.south;
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