Ready for its makeover in Rathmines for €1.5m

Merton Road is a secluded and much-sought-after road of mainly Edwardian semis that runs parallel to the green Luas line at Cowper. Number nine is a fine family home in need of some modernisation but with the scope to extend into its garage and out the back into the 30m-long west-facing back garden.

The bay-fronted property has fine period features. Its two formal reception rooms have pocket interconnecting doors and matching wooden mantlepieces with tiled insets. The sittingroom is a large room to the front. The diningroom, to the rear, has a door leading out to the garden, this house’s most beguiling feature.

Laid out in lawn and facing west this is the kind of garden that contemporary homes no longer have. It offers room to roam and explore and includes a concrete beehive-shaped bomb shelter that will distract any child dragged to open viewings for long enough to let parents really take a look around.

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The house also has an internal garage that hasn’t yet been converted and it could make a really good den or TV room.

The kitchen, to the rear, has a solid fuel stove warming it, as well as an old-fashioned pantry. There is plenty of scope to extend out across the width of the house to get a large open-plan space that would make the most of the rear westerly aspect.

The house which measures 217sq m (2,340sq ft) is asking €1.5 million through agents DNG.

The first of five bedrooms is on the half landing and is currently set up as an office. There are four good-sized doubles on the first floor. The rooms feel capacious but are sparsely furnished and some don’t have built-in wardrobes.

Two houses on the road are currently being refurbished. Robert Havey of Mossday Construction, who is currently refurbishing, 40 Merton Road, which sold for €1.63 million in February 2015, estimates upgrading number nine will cost from €260,000 to €500,000.

Number 24 sold for €1.525 million last June, according to the Property Price Register.