Lombard Street townhouses before and after

Two redbrick homes in a pretty Dublin 8 neighbourhood are 10 minutes from the city yet still offer a community atmosphere few new schemes can match

30 Lombard Street West/€650,000

Number 30 Lombard Street West in Dublin 8 is a two-bedroom redbrick cottage-style house (one storey to the front and two behind) for auction by Colliers Jackson-Stops on May 25th with a guide of €650,000.

It's not hard to see why this area, bordered by the Grand Canal and Clanbrassil Street, is so popular: at 10 minutes from the city centre, it is still a quiet spot of small period houses and a community atmosphere.

Catherine Hall of The Lemon Street Gallery and her husband Paul own number 30. This house has the right amount of space for a couple or a small family and makes entertaining easy. Catherine's efforts to improve the cottage over the past four years have blended the contemporary with the traditional, notably the addition of an AAI award winning extension by architect Roland Bosch. The hall, with a fanlight above the door, has steps up to the two bedrooms and down to living areas. The sittingroom has a 14ft high ceiling with ornate plaster details. The original cast-iron chimneypiece is in place and a large sheet of mirror above the mantel stretches to the ceiling.

The bathroom is spacious with a mosaic around the bath and a window to the garden. Next to it is a small utility space. Also at this level one enters an extension so modern that it would be hard to imagine it existed from looking at the front façade. But it is not at odds with the rest of the house. This long room comprises living, kitchen and dining spaces.

A white poured resin floor stretches from a seating area at one end to kitchen units along the wall in the middle and then up a few steps to a dining area whose floor is covered in brushed oak. One wall is almost entirely glass with doors that open to a sandstone patio that echoes the levels of the internal room with steps at the same position as those inside.

The kitchen has a stainless steel counter and integrated fridge and dishwasher. Bosch designed the extension with sunlight in mind: a cleverly angled window in the roof means light can stream in at all times of day and, during the summer months, Catherine says the outdoor and indoor space can become one. The patio is enclosed by smart black trellising, has mature planting and an exit to a way at the back of the house.

Upstairs, there is a single bedroom of reasonable size and a good-sized main bedroom with double doors that open onto the roof of the extension. This room has fitted wardrobes and access to the attic. There is a small garden to the front and resident's disk car-parking.