Revamped Morehampton three-bed for €1.25m

A terraced redbrick in Donnybrook, completely revamped by its energetic owners since they bought it in 2019, is relatively small but bursting with interesting design ideas. Period and modern are mixed to very good effect in the interior decoration: there’s ornate Victorian plasterwork in the ceiling of the very sleek modern kitchen, new timber sash windows, touches of Art Deco with Crittal-style floor-to-ceiling windows in the kitchen/dining room, and an overall monochrome scheme broken in places by bright colour.

Sinead Doherty and her partner bought No 10 Morehampton Terrace in 2019 (for €770,000 according to the Property Price Register) and moved in with their new baby while planning a revamp with architect Paul O’Loughlin that involved knocking down the whole back of the house; their builder was Colm Hoey of Mach Build.

Fast-forward to July 2022 and Doherty — cradling a new baby, eight-week-old Jesse, in her arms — explains that they’re selling now mainly because they want to take on a completely different project. She did the project management and interior fit-out of their house herself, a hobby she wants to pursue.

No 10 Morehampton Terrace, a three-bedroom 124 sq m (1,334 sq ft) terraced redbrick house built around 1880 is now for sale for €1.25 million through DNG. Owned previously by one family for 50 years, it has been rewired and replumbed, has underfloor heating downstairs, air-to-water heating, A-rated sash windows from Kells Windows and an A3 Ber. It has on-street parking for residents.

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There are over 20 houses in the terraced cul-de-sac off Morehampton Road, the first turn left after Marlborough Road as you go towards the city. A famous former resident was Éamon de Valera, who lived at number 32, one of the slightly grander Edwardian houses on the opposite side of the road, with his wife Sinead from 1910 to 1916, according to a plaque on the house.

The glossy grey front door of No 10, with colourful Art Deco-style glass panels, opens into a monochrome front hall: it’s floored with black-and-white mosaic tiles and the walls are painted grey below the dado rail, white above. On the left is the living room, with a solid oak parquet floor, pale grey marble mantelpiece, centre rose and panel-effect framing on the walls.

Behind it is the most striking room in the house, the L-shaped kitchen/diningroom designed by Cillian and Lisa Johnston of Cillian Johnston Ltd that looks out on to a courtyard garden through the black-metal-framed floor-to-ceiling Crittal-style windows/doors.

The kitchen has solid oak units and is floored with large black and white Marazzi Italian marble-effect porcelain tiles; the counter and island are topped with white quartz as is the full-length splashback. There’s elaborate Victorian-style cornicing in the high ceiling — not original, although it looks it, made by Euromould. Smart mid-century modern lights hang over the island.

There’s space for a decent-sized utility room off the kitchen and for a small study off the diningroom beside a separate short hall that opens into a laneway at the back of the house.

Double doors open from the dining area into a small but cleverly designed courtyard: white porcelain tiles floor the patio, plants spill down the high back wall — a “vertical garden” says the agent — and a water feature is backed by blue mosaic tiling.

Upstairs, an Art Deco-style stained glass window over the landing was co-designed — like the front door glass panels — by Sean Finlan of Rathmines Glass with Sinead. Inventive design and bold use of colour is evident in all the upstairs rooms: doors, walls and the ceiling leading to a child’s bedroom on the return are painted a kind of burnt orange (Heat by Little, Greene); colour-block walls in the child’s room are painted half white/half aquamarine (Deep Water Green from Paint & Paper Library).

There are three bedrooms upstairs and a family bathroom. The main bedroom has its original wooden floors, white walls with panel-effect framing and a ceiling painted grey/black. An arch in the wall behind the double bed opens into a small, neatly-fitted walk-in wardrobe with hanging space, shelving and drawers; a door on the other side opens into a smart en suite shower room part-tiled/part painted in matching pink (Monticello Rose by Benjamin Moore paints).

A rear lane at the end of the cul-de-sac opens on to Marlborough Road and also winds back down to Morehampton Terrace.