Cute city types don't suit long term commitment

HOUSE HUNTER:Three pretty period houses on the city side of Portobello took our fancy but were too small to meet our needs going forward, writes DON MORGAN

IT DOESN’T RAIN, it pours, like last week, when we had more fluid emanating from the skies than from Gwyneth Paltrow’s tear ducts during Oscar season. Not once did I manage to leave the house without both feeling, and looking, like a drowned ginger rat. Looking for our own port in the storm we uncovered not just one house, but three in the same block, which taught us a valuable lesson about how long you want to live somewhere.

They were on the city side of Portobello, behind Synge Street. I keep getting drawn to this neck of the woods. Maybe it’s because the Morgan family originated not far from there, before migrating towards Thurles.

The three homes were pretty period houses, part of the network of 19th century built terraces that make this area one of the most charming in a city normally distorted by the self-loathing you can feel in other, more neglected neighbourhoods.

The first house, the one in our price range, had a lot of potential, but only that. They say never judge a book by its cover, and in this regard this house is a testimony to that same adage. The house had been “renovated” by a “builder” for rental. I got the impression that the agent was a little embarrassed at what the owner had seen fit to do in the house. No Dubliner who has any love of his city would commit such an act of architectural vandalism. Except anyone involved in Wood Quay, the demolition of the Theatre Royal or Frascati House. They’re all isolated incidents.

The big feature of these houses, which allows them to be small yet valuable, is the bay windowed front parlour. In other houses we’ve seen, these rooms have been statements about the owners’ bourgeois credentials – “this is who we are and this is the stuff we like. And, yes, we’ve culture coming out of our ass.”

In terms of culture, what this house had coming out of whatever orifice was bacteria. It was filthy. No doubt there was a cure for swine flu in one of the gym socks festering in the awful “en suite” semi showers, used as makeshift storage space. As for the bay windowed parlour? It had been boarded up, and turned, nay rendered, into a dark, downstairs room and an equally dark upstairs room. The place was dripping with workmanship, not shoddy, but without any semblance of pride.

Nevertheless I loved it: the bastard love child of a south Dublin period dwelling and a shack in downtown Soweto, all it needed was love, and maybe a flame thrower. We’re interested, at half of the asked for 495k, it could be a bargain.

When we went back to the car, we noticed people joined in a mass snoop around open viewings in the area, firing off each other like synapses firing in the mind of a child when it discovers its finger could fit in a live socket.

We ended up going to two further houses, which proved to be the very opposite in terms of the standard of renovation and of maintenance.

In one, I had to stop myself running up the stairs and bagsing my room, forcibly being dragged out by Maureen who was more than a little tempted to throw me down the stairs. The best of finishing on extension, exposed brick and good quality kitchens, plasterwork and lighting just got me really excited. I used to get excited about music and going out.

In the long and winding discussion after, we realised what the problem with houses in this part of Dublin is. Most we’ve viewed are simply not big enough for more than three people. Try two kids, or three, you have to sell and move. We have the uncertainty that many punters have, euphemistically referred to as “sitting on the fence”, ie, staying the hell away. The price tags of 595k for each will have to drop further. They’re houses for the young and cool, or for those with a seven-year property itch. Maybe they’re not for us, unless we’re willing to accept that the house we buy is not the house for the next many decades, unlike my granddad, 90 as of yesterday, who’s lived in the same place since 1962.