£400,000 expected for house with pool

A large semi-detached four-bedroom house at 12 Brewery Road, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, is expected to fetch close to £400,000 at a Hamilton Osborne King auction on February 3rd. This is a good, spacious family house with the added attraction of a 160-ftlong west-facing garden with a swimmingpool and a very large conservatory.

Located close to the Stillorgan dual carriageway, the house is fairly private thanks to wooden electronically-controlled gates that open on to a wide gravelled front garden with plenty of parking space. The double-fronted house, which dates from the 1960s, has an attractive half-brick, halfrendered facade that is almost completely covered in creeper in the summer months.

A glassed-in porch leads into the hall, off which are the two main reception rooms - a drawingoom-cum-diningroom to the right, and a large family room to the left. Both these rooms are a spacious 30 ft by 12 ft and both have marble fireplaces.

The layout is unusual in that the kitchen opens directly from the drawingroom, and also has a door to the second reception room allowing for a good flow through the house. Though not particularly large, the kitchen is well laid out with a good range of timber units and tough ceramic work tops. There is a long pantry off the drawingroom, and a spacious utility room leading from the conservatory.

The double conservatory is over 30 ft wide, and has double doors leading to the garden. Directly outside the conservatory is a raised deck surrounding the swimmingpool.

The owners built the metre-deep pool themselves and as it is heated, they use it for at least half the year. It is screened from the rest of the garden by a row of trees and shrubs while tall trees in neighbouring gardens add to the sense of privacy.

Beyond the pool area is at least another 100 ft of garden, most of it landscaped and gravelled. There is a large pergola running across the end of the garden.

Back inside, there are three double bedrooms and a single bedroom on the first floor. The main bedroom runs the full depth of the house and has an en suite bathroom. The remaining bedrooms share a large family bathroom. An open-tread staircase leads to a large attic room, which is currently used as a bedroom. It is a pleasant, light room with Velux roof lights set into the pine-panelled walls and ceiling. There is gas-fired central heating throughout, and the windows are double glazed aluminium.