A partly built house with excellent views across Dublin Bay is being offered for sale in Dalkey for €2.25 million. Agent Vincent Finnegan and builder Alan Kelly of OC Developments are hoping that a buyer interested in having a say in the final fit and finish of the house will be tempted to buy before it is complete.
It is one of two that Kelly is building side by side on Dalkey Avenue – and he plans to live in the house next door. He bought a single house, 25 Dalkey Avenue, for €600,000 in 2012 and lived in it with his family while applying for planning permission to demolish it and build two new homes.
The house for sale, called Anglesea, is at "first fix" stage: the basic layout of the house has already been fixed, but a buyer could choose floors, sanitary ware, paint, style of kitchen and possibly make small changes to some of the internal layout. The house is designed in the Modern style – it is cube-shaped, has large windows and is largely open plan – by Kelly and Ferreira Architects.
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Kelly is used to building one-off contemporary homes as well as high-end extensions: his company Oaklawn Construction (now called OC Developments) built Maytree, a house in Enniskerry that won an architectural award in 2008.
Anglesea will be a two-storey-over-basement house. Its chief selling point will undoubtedly be its sweeping sea views from the livingroom and best of all from the main bedroom on the top floor, views that take in Dublin Bay from nearly the city centre to well past Howth.
Kelly did consider putting the livingroom on the top floor but says “upside down doesn’t work; people don’t like dragging shopping upstairs, they prefer a traditional layout”.
Accommodation in the 326sq m (3,500sq ft) property is planned to include an open-plan livingroom and kitchen on the main floor, with a smaller livingroom at the back of the house, with doors to the back garden.
There will be two bedrooms at the back of the house upstairs as well as the main en suite bedroom. The basement will have separate access from the front of the house and could be a teenager’s room or an au pair’s or granny’s quarters. A fourth bedroom here will open into a small outdoor courtyard from where there are steps up to the garden. There will be a lawn at the front and parking for several cars.
Anglesea is roughly halfway between Dalkey village and Killiney Castle Hotel on the steeply sloping Dalkey Avenue.