Artist's home paints a pretty picture

Dublin 4/€1.25m: A four-bedroom house in Bath Avenue, with original features, has generous spaces, stained glass windows and sunny aspects, writes Rose Doyle.

Bath Avenue, Dublin, 4, is lined with handsome period houses. It is in a part of town more burgeoning than most, and is much sought after and highly respectable.

It wasn't always thus: time was, in the early 19th century, when Bath Avenue edged onto the nefarious Beggarsbush, shelter to highwaymen, smugglers and thieves and the reason the denizens of Ringsend, Irishtown, Ballsbridge, Sandymount and Donnybrook had to fully arm themselves before venturing out at night.

Painter Clodagh Thornton, who is selling her home at 23 Bath Avenue, has an affectionate appreciation for the area's history. She has carefully tended to number 23's original features and style. Built in around 1840, by which time respectability was already beckoning, a sense of its period begins with the front door mouldings and fanlight and carries through in original polished timber floors, sash windows, high ceilings, cornicing and panelled doors.

It's at its most beguiling where the shafts of coloured light spill across landing and stairs from a circular, stained-glass window high above the return. All of the front windows have been remodelled by Ventrolla.

The two-storey house has a floor area of 149sq m (1,608sq ft) in which there are four bedrooms, three reception rooms (two interconnecting) and a kitchen/breakfastroom.

Agent Felicity Fox will put it to auction on October 26th with an AMV of €1.25m.

The interconnecting reception rooms on the ground floor cut an elegant sweep through the house to where steps lead to a high, atrium-style sun room at the rear.

The reception room floors are of polished timber, the ceilings are high and there is the palest of pale lime on the walls which highlight the artful green-veining on the original, stone fireplace. The impressive folding doors between are of mahogany.

The lovely sun room, which is about 25ft high, was added in recent years. It has a vaulted glass roof and tiled floor with centre inset in Chinese slate. It opens onto a paved and sheltered patio which is a couple of stone steps lower than the garden proper.

The garden is kept nicely private by high walls and a couple of trees against the end wall.

The cheerful, creamy-orange kitchen/breakfastroon overlooks the garden and has double glass doors to the sun room.

The high ceilinged hallway has a traditional arch and toilet under the stairs. Upstairs, on the return, there is a small bedroom and family bathroom and, on the main landing under another high ceiling and light from a skylight, a space for computer, desk and books.

Two of the other bedrooms face the front of the house. The fourth and main one is to the rear and has a polished wood floor. The front garden is gravelled and given privacy by a couple of trees. There is disc parking on Bath Avenue.