Head over heels about space at smart Monkstown design for €515,000

When the vendors bought the newly built 6 Windsor Place, Monkstown, Co Dublin, in 2005 it was a two-bedroom house with mezzanine and floor area of 70sq m (753sq ft); some 12 years later, after a lot of work, an imaginative redesign and an inversion of the original layout, it is back on the market with a floor area of 99sq m (1065sq ft), bedrooms now on the ground floor and an open-plan living-dining-kitchen area on the first floor.

The newly imagined house also has a second bathroom, first-floor balcony and limed oak floors throughout. The vendors’ family has grown along with the house and now needs more space.

The original asking price for the house was €385,000; agent DNG is today asking €515,000.

Architects Simon Canz and John Conlon came up with the inverted design, putting three bedrooms, a family shower room and lots of clever storage on the ground floor.

For the first floor, reached via an enclosed, bespoke, oak staircase, they designed an open, white-painted living space in which a kitchen designed by Italian Stefan Hoeckenreiner is two steps lower than the living-dining area.

A wall of window overlooks a swathe of playing fields and, in the green-blue beyond, the Dublin mountains.

The kitchen also has a skylight, along with a slate floor and deep storage area. A long window seat is a nice touch in the living area, as are an external viewing balcony and spiral staircase leading to the rear, patio-decking area.

A white-tiled family bathroom on this level has mirrored fittings and a skylight.

The bright, ground-floor bedrooms have walls and fittings in shades of white and grey, as well as built-in wardrobes. Sliding doors maximise space and storage possibilities and the high entrance hall, with its overhead skylight, has an atrium-like feel.

There is a small communal garden for the eight houses that make up Windsor Place. Lawned, with sheltering walls and shrubs, it is in the process of being replanted and overhauled.