Showhouse star ready for a new role

Three to four bedroom period house in Dublin 3 for €960,000

Number 64 Malahide Road is one of a pair of Georgian semi-detached houses on the city end of the Malahide Road, just before the Griffith Avenue intersection. The house was renovated in 2002 with interior design by Mary Ryder and it featured in RTÉ's popular Showhouse series.

The refurbishment included installing underfloor heating and double-glazed sash windows throughout while retaining the window’s original shutters.

In terms of original features, there is fine coving in the hall and in the interconnecting rooms at this level but the hall floor is now porcelain tiled, and the original fireplaces in the reception rooms have been replaced by large gas-fired versions with sandstone surrounds. The floors in these rooms are now walnut. Thirteen years on the finishes jar slightly but changing the fire surrounds and replacing the swishy curtains would do a lot to update the look of these rooms.

A good-sized kitchen, which features stone counter tops that have been chipped and may need replacing, is at garden level in the room to the front with a dining room to the rear. This room has a gas wall-set fire whose glass front needs replacing and French doors that open to the 17m-paved east-facing rear. There is a utility room to the front and a small home office to the back of this floor and a guest toilet.

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The layout may not suit family living in that the family bathroom, a space on the garden-level return – has a step-up-and-into bath but no shower.

On the first floor there are four bedrooms. The master is to the front and has two tall windows. The room has been divided into two areas, a dressingroom and sleeping area, by a vertical half wall that separates them. On this surface is a wall-hung cabinet, big enough to accommodate most people’s TV, which is hidden behind an Asian-style pair of canvases.

There are two more doubles here and a fourth bedroom, a single that could also be a home office.

The property’s most interesting talking point is a false bookshelf that hides a shower room behind its door. It looks like the kind of decorating decoy a James Bond villain might use to throw adversaries off his scent.

The property is a bank sale and is unfurnished so getting a sense of the scale of its rooms is difficult. It is also photogenic; a fresh coat of paint would help to better appreciate its fine proportions.

Some of the recessed lighting have blown and hasn’t been replaced, which make it feel darker than it is.

The property, which measures 250sq m, is asking €960,000 through Sherry FitzGerald. There is off-street parking for several cars and side access.