Refurbished with love in old Portobello

Anyone old enough to remember when the church on Victoria Street was a dole office would find the area unrecognisable today. The exteriors look much the same but behind the red brick facades many of the houses have been transformed from grotty bedsits and house shares into fine family homes. Many sport snazzy glazed extensions.

Number 15 St Kevin’s Road is one such property having been refurbished by its present owners 10 years ago who used architect Laurie O’Connor to extend the property adding a bright kitchen cum breakfast room to the rear and a swish family bathroom on the first floor return.

The warm white kitchen has a wall of units and worktops with black Corian countertops and these elements are mirrored in the breakfast bar/island that runs parallel to it.

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The room has space for a good size dining table. When seated at it your view is nothing but floor to ceiling glazing and decking. Potted specimen trees fill the internal courtyard and the decked rear which is also greened by more specimen trees in pots supplied by landscape architects Thirty Three Trees, run by Jimi Shields an Maria Vlahos, the latter is a neighbour. There is a bike shed and a cherry blossom that was in the garden when the owners first arrived. It is wearing its first blossoms of the season.

The family is trading up, moving around the corner to Bloomfield Avenue.

The original part of the house has lovely period cornicing in its two reception rooms. The sittingroom to the front has smart built-in bookshelves, polished floorboards and a white marble open fireplace. It looks out on to the street.

What would have originally been a formal dining room is used as a playroom for the two children. It has a reproduction cast iron fireplace and a gas fire. Its window looks out to a small internal courtyard designed to ensure this room retains an external light source. There is a toilet under the stairs.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two doubles and a single. The family bathroom on the return is a fine space with a separate bath and shower. Opaque glass makes this south-facing space warm and bright.

The house which measures 127sq m (1,367sq ft) is asking €725,000 through agents SherryFitzGerald. Parking is on street.

Jewish Museum

According to the Property Price Registrar number 31 St Kevin’s Road, a double fronted, two-bedroom period house in need of refurbishment sold for €385,000 in July 2014. Number 19 sold for €605,000 in November of the same year.

As well as its warren of red-brick streets, the area boasts a myriad of cafes and artisan shops. Work has yet to begin on the proposed Jewish Museum development on nearby Walworth Road which comprises the demolition of the synagogue located for almost a century in numbers 3 and 4 Walworth Road and three adjacent terraced houses, the construction of a two-storey museum, a basement requiring a 6m excavation and facsimile 19th-century-style elevations.