Dublin 4 €2.75m
2 Herbert Road
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
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Description: Four-bed semi near Aviva stadium, completely renovated, blending period-style features with high-end modern design
Agent: Sherry FitzGerald
A semi-detached house a few minutes' walk from the Aviva stadium has been completely renovated and extended – in fact, the couple who bought this smart four-bedroom home around 16 years ago say they have pretty much rebuilt it. Number 2 Herbert Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, is now a modern family home with period-style features.
It’s been a great place for pre-rugby parties, graduations, twenty-firsts, and a happy home for their teenage children, with a gym and home cinema in a basement with separate access from the garden.
They bought the house opposite the Sandymount Hotel on Herbert Road for €1.25 million and spent nearly as much renovating it – it was two to three years before they could move in. Now the 314sq m (3,381sq ft) semi-detached house built in 1880 in a Regency style is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €2.75 million.
It is over 100sq m (1,000sq ft) bigger than when they started. Architect Paul Brazil designed the home to their specifications: "We wanted a family home where all the rooms were useable, we didn't want a 'good' room," they say.
Landscaped garden
A door with stained-glass panels opens into a timber-floored hall, with a traditional-style centre rose. The dual-aspect family room on the left has a large period-style marble fireplace, cornicing and deep coving.
A door on the right of the hall opens into a long, mostly open-plan space: a drawingroom at the front of the house opens straight into a sittingroom, which in turn opens down a few steps into a diningroom, from where French windows open into the garden at the side of the house. There are double doors – usually folded back – between the drawingroom and sittingroom, and both rooms have matching marble fireplaces with open fires.
The diningroom opens into the kitchen as well as the rear garden. The bright open-plan kitchen/breakfastroom is top notch: there’s a large island unit with a polished black granite top, like the countertops, solid wood floor, a built-in display unit at the breakfastroom end, where there’s a table that could seat up to 10 people. Floor-to-ceiling windows at the side and back look onto the garden, and French windows from both open to the outside, making the landscaped garden another outdoor room.
Upstairs, the main bedroom on the first floor return has a large en suite floored with black floor tiles and black marble sink unit, a bath and shower; it also has a walk-in dressingroom with built-in wardrobes, drawers and presses. There are plantation shutters – a feature throughout the house – on the bedroom windows.
Courtyard parking
There are three more bedrooms on the top floor, two of them en suite. One has a separate study area at the front which could possibly be turned into another small bedroom or a dressingroom. The family bathroom has a bath and double shower.
The landscaped garden is very private, with old granite walls, trees, a lawn, very high raised flowerbeds and a stone path leading to a circular patio area at the end of the garden.
The basement, down 12 steep steps from the side of the house outside, has storage cupboards, gym equipment and a space set up as a home cinema: it could be integrated into the main house, the owners say. There is good room for parking in the flagged front courtyard behind electronic gates.
The location is very convenient: a 20-minute walk to the city centre, and only 15 minutes – outside of rush hour the owner says – to get to the airport via the airport tunnel.
