City home on Synge Street: walk-in, walk everywhere

DUBLIN 8: €985,000:A refurbished city house of grand proportions has period features – and up-to-date insulation

IF YOU WORK in town and want a car-free life then this house at 45 Synge Street, Dublin 8, could work for you. The 260sq m (2,799sq ft) house, which is for sale for €985,000 through Sherry FitzGerald, is close to quirky Camden Street, around the corner from a Dublin Bikes stand and, for any night-life lovers in residence, the Dublin nightspots are pretty much all walkable, from Whelans and the POD, and beyond.

The four to five-bedroom house, with grand proportions, was built around 1861, and is in a terrace of one, two and three-storey over basement brick houses opposite Synge Street school and church.

The couple who live here refurbished the house when they moved in – replacing ceilings and floors, which also involved removing ash from beneath the boards (and getting covered in ash “snowstorms”) and replacing it with more up-to-date insulation.

The house now is largely covered in a beige carpet and walls are painted in pleasing muted colours from white to mushroom.

Off the large entrance hall is a diningroom that runs through double doors to a sittingroom with light coming in from both sides through large windows (the owners replaced the windows at the back of the house but have kept the sash windows at the front because properties on this street are protected structures).

Intact period features throughout the house include plasterwork (some replaced with matches of the original), fireplaces and delightful shutters that are pulled up out of the window reveals.

On the first floor is a bedroom suite designed by the owners with a hotel room in mind. The bedroom to the front has an original fireplace and two generous sash windows overlooking the tree-lined street.

It links to a room next door, with an en suite shower-room, that is currently used as a dressingroom but could be another bedroom.

On the top floor are three bedrooms tucked beneath the (floored) attic, whose semi-sloped roofs have Velux windows in them.

The kitchen – with island unit– and adjoining livingroom are on the ground floor.

This is a sunken basement at the front and ground level at the back giving a good connection – through double doors – to the garden, which has a storage space in it, attached to the house.

Inside the house, beside this, is a utility room and the family bathroom is on the return above this.

45 Synge Street, Dublin 8

Four to five-bed 1860s terraced house, with garden

Agent: Sherry FitzGerald