Ready-to-go red-brick in Rathmines

Buying a fixer-upper paid off for the couple who bought 3 Grosvenor Place in 2001. Then it was typical Rathmines old-style rental – a vast house divided into five units. They bought it at auction for €870,000 and embarked on an ambitious and doubtless time and cash consuming process of bringing the red-brick semi-detached house back to a family house.

By the time they put it back on the market in 2009 (for €2.4m) it was a 296sq m (3,186sq ft) five-bedroom house with a long list of original period features such as sash windows, shutters, floorboards, fireplaces and attractive decorative plaster work all restored. It took well over a year to sell with the current owners buying the ready to walk into property for just over €2.1 million in late 2010. They are now downsizing and 3 Grosvenor Place, which has a 33m-long rear garden, is back on the market through Sherry FitzGerald for €1.95million.

It’s a substantial Victorian two-storey over garden level house that’s tall and wide and so the main reception rooms at hall level and the two bedrooms above have lovely lofty proportions. In all there are five bedrooms, one with an en suite and one that is so small it is used as a walk-in wardrobe. The family bathroom was probably at one stage an additional bedroom, it certainly looks large enough. Windows in return, on the landing and a rooflight make the hall exceptionally bright.

The kitchen down at garden level is to the front, fitted with painted timber country-style units and a large island. A new blue grey Aga has been installed by the current owners. This room has been knocked through to the rear family room – a cosy space – that opens out to a patio area and the back garden. Also at this level is a decent sized utility room opening out to the back garden and a guest toilet.

New owners will probably redecorate, mostly freshening up the paintwork throughout, in all likelihood choosing the same heritage colours currently on the walls.

There is parking to the front for three cars and parking to the rear in the garden as a lane runs to the back of these houses.