On De Vesci Terrace with a stylish mews

Monkstown/€1.8 million: Although needing updating, a period home on a popular street should achieve a strong price. Orna Mulcahy reports.

One of the fine double-fronted houses on De Vesci Terrace in Monkstown could make over €1.8 million when it is auctioned by Douglas Newman Good on March 10th. The two-storey over basement house, number 3, has a stunningly refurbished mews to the rear, and while there is just a small area of garden between the house and the mews, residents of the terrace have the use of a private six-acre park with four tennis courts.

Number 3 has been in the same family for over 25 years and the owner is the first to admit that the main house needs updating. Its 297 sq m (3,200 sq ft) includes two grand reception rooms and a kitchen at hall level, four bedrooms and a lavish bathroom on the upper floor, and a series of rooms at basement level.

New owners will certainly convert the basement to kitchen and living space, reclaiming the hall level kitchen as a study or family room. While there is a good deal of work to be done, the house has kept most of its original features, such as superb plasterwork in the drawingroom and diningroom, workings shutters to the fine bay windows at the front of the house, and handsome marble fireplaces in the principle rooms.

By contrast, the granite fronted mews house was completely renovated five years ago in a cool contemporary style and with all mod cons such as underfloor heating and sophisticated lighting. It has around 88 sq m (950 sq ft) over two floors with the kitchen cum diningroom, two bedrooms, one of which is en suite, and a shower room downstairs. The double-height kitchen is a show stopper with its matt white cupboards soaring ceilingwards, and its sandstone fireplace complete with gleaming steel flue.

Leading off the kitchen is a corridor with a narrow flight of stairs leading up to the livingroom which overlooks the kitchen, and which has far reaching views over Dún Laoghaire through a wall of windows.

The vaulted ceiling has a series of electrically operated Velux windows that send light spilling down onto a superb wide plank pine floor imported from Denmark. New owners will easily be able to live in the mews while work is carried out it in the main house. Alternatively, the mews could be rented out, or used as a very smart spare room for favoured guests.