Sandymount home for £700,000-plus

A terraced two-storey over garden level house at 7 Leahy's Terrace, Sandymount, Dublin 4, is expected to fetch over £700,000 at a Sherry FitzGerald auction on April 13th. The four-bedroom house is the first on the road to come on the open market in over a decade, according to agent Simon Ensor.

In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom walks down this road which is flanked on one side by Sandymount Church. The owner is architect Peter Dudley, who had his eye on the house for a while before it came on the market 15 years ago. Because of this, he had practically renovated the property in his mind before he moved in. "It was an architect's dream," he says.

Precisely because nothing had been done to it for years, there were no false partitions and fireplaces were in place; cornices and ceiling roses were intact - so he and his wife Patricia were presented with a blank canvas.

The renovation was sympathetic to the existing space with period features retained, while contemporary rooms were created from those spaces that didn't contain original details, including the kitchen and upstairs bathroom.

The kitchen is on the middle floor along with interconnecting reception rooms, which can be divided by closing folding doors.

Having the kitchen here, rather than in the basement, has meant these two rooms are naturally used as a family space instead of being left as an unused area in the middle of the home.

Steps from the kitchen down into the garden create an easy relationship between the interior and exterior. The garden has an area paved with terracotta tiles from the original downstairs kitchen, with a lawn beyond. The kitchen contains white laminated units, a granite worktop and stainless-steel splash-back. The microwave is built into the wall leaving the countertop free and this, along with the other built-in items, comes with the house.

At garden level are two double bedrooms, one with study attached, and a sunny family room with French doors opening to the south-facing front garden.

This room has been divided to create a small bathroom, with granite shelf, large mirror and recessed low voltage lights, plus a storage space in what would have formerly been the downstairs entrance.

Storage is a recurring theme throughout the home, with ample built-in wardrobes in the bedrooms, and cupboards under the stairs. Conversion of the downstairs room into three different spaces, and of two upstairs rooms into three, has been done so that ceiling moulding does not disappear under partitions.

The main bedroom upstairs is huge with two large windows overlooking the church. The existing room to the back of the house was divided into a bathroom and bedroom accessed by a dressing area with granite worktop and large mirrored cupboard. The whole house is floored in single-colour carpeting.