Plenty of room for dreams to grow

These houses on the same Glasnevin road need nothing more than modernisation to transform them into very stylish properties

€425,000House-hunters who aspire to live on Iona Road but are priced out of that dream should look to Crawford Avenue, a road that runs perpendicular to the alpha address.

Number 10 is a smaller version of the type of period property found on Iona. The Alexander Strain-built redbrick has three bedrooms, whereas many of the Iona houses have four or five, and boasts some lovely period features. The property is 121sq m (1,300sq ft) in size and is asking €425,000 through agents Sherry FitzGerald.

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This house is more affordable than almost all of the properties recently sold on Iona Road. According to the property price register, 54 Iona Road, a four-bedroom, bay-fronted redbrick, sold for €560,000 in July 2011.

In August of that year, number 43, a four-bedroom box bay-fronted property sold for €525,000.

This semi-detached house is in original condition and needs some modernisation, particularly in the kitchen. There is stained-glass panel-work in the front door that is repeated in panels in the bay window of the sitting room, which also has a lovely white marble feature fireplace.

Sliding double doors lead through to the dining room, a nicely proportioned room with a contrasting marble fireplace.

The scullery kitchen and adjoining breakfast room are located on the return. This area needs work.

The only interesting original feature is a third fireplace of the same style, this time in black marble. If opened up, this room has great potential to become a light-filled space with windows on two sides looking directly into the east-facing back garden.

There is room to extend out the side of the house but not really room to go into the garden. Currently there is a small loo off the scullery. This would be better positioned under the stairs. Upstairs on the return is a single bedroom to the rear of the bathroom. It has built-in wardrobes and a painted cast-iron fireplace. There is also a separate lavatory on this level.

The master bedroom to the front has a trio of windows making it light-filled.

The bedroom at the back is lost in the decade that taste forgot: the 1970s. It has a swirling orange carpet and of-their-era built-in wardrobes.

There is a garage at the back of the garden offering vehicular rear access. There is also side pedestrian access from the front to the back.

10 Crawford Avenue, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

DescriptionStrain-built three-bed redbrick with period features and an east-facing rear garden

AgentSherry FitzGerald

€385,000Number 36 Crawford Avenue is a four-bedroom mock Georgian redbrick that was built in the 1970s. The house overlooks the grounds of St Columba's Church and national school, making the school run a doddle for parents of girls.

The property is in original condition and in need of modernisation. That means a dark swirling floral carpet greets you when you open the front door, darkening the hall and stairs. The eat-in kitchen features of-its-time coffee-and-cream units and a bay windowed dining area. A small hall to the rear leads out to the back door.

This is effectively dead space that could be used far more creatively as a utility room or as a place to dry clothes.

The sitting room to the rear is spacious and a nice square shape. It has an Adams-style fireplace and door leading to the back garden.

The house measures 113sq m (1,216sq ft) and is asking €385,000 through agents Sherry FitzGerald.

On the first floor there are four bedrooms. The master bedroom has what is best described as a hole-in-the-wall shower, an unusual tile-fronted quasi-enclosed feature that these houses were built with. The bathroom suite is pink. There are two queen-sized rooms to the rear that have plenty of built-in storage. The fourth bedroom, a box room, is to the front.

The back garden is sweet, full of snowdrops at this time of the year and east-facing in aspect. There is pedestrian rear access.

Open this back garden door, walk down the lane and you’ll find yourself at a communal garden, a sizeable strip of grass that is used by all the houses. It shares its boundary wall with the Monastery of St Alphonsus and at one time was part of the religious order’s farm.

From there, you get a rear window view of the neighbours and the kind of expansion work they did to their homes. Many have built large two-storey extensions, to take advantage of the fact that these properties have large attics. The attic at number 36 has not been converted.

There is off-street parking out front for several cars.

36 Crawford Avenue, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

DescriptionA four-bed mock Georgian 1970s house with an east-facing rear garden, an additional communal garden

AgentSherry FitzGerald