In this age of anxiety, we are all seeking a sense of serenity. Number 8 Geraldine Street, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom Victorian terraced redbrick, is a beautifully laid-out space that is a tranquil mix of both.
Part of its appeal is the vista from its principal bedroom that looks due south across Blessington Street Basin, a former drinking water reservoir in Dublin 7, that once served residents of the north city.
It is now a park operated by Dublin City Council. Fashion designer Lucy Downes had never heard of the public space when she bought the house, which backs on to this Phibsborough landmark. But when she saw how much sky you could see from upstairs, she was bewitched.
Downes’s design speciality is high-grade cashmere, the light as a feather kind that feels like a big hug to wear. Having worked with Donna Karan for a decade in New York, the economics graduate who then turned to fashion, set up her label in 1999.
With pieces woven in Nepal using the finest of Loro Piana yarns, her Sphere One label has fans such as chef Rachel Allen and composer and conductor Eimear Noone.
Downes’s long-time friend Tom de Paor brought another artist’s eye to the design of the project.
The result is an exercise in creative calm. The front of the 1860s-built redbrick remains the same and opens into a French navy-blue-painted timber floored hall with a coat rack from Downes’s childhood school running the length of the hall, adorned with her colourful creations.
The front room doubles as a guest room, so the sofa bed has been opened up to show its flexibility. An exposed yellow-brick chimney breast adds texture.
From the hall a set of steps leads up to the first floor. This is the first of two staircases in the property, a luxury usually confined to big houses.
The room to the rear is where you can really see de Paor’s influence come into play. The rest of the layout has been completely reimagined, in the softest way imaginable.
This room is now an internal one, lit by clerestory windows bringing in light from two different directions. Art adorns the walls.
From here a set of steps lead down into the kitchen. But the steps are fixed to neither floor nor wall. Rather they are free-standing and painted a Japanese red. This is a classic signature of de Paor.
A glazed courtyard brings indirect light into the kitchen from the middle of the house. Filled with ferns, it looks like a giant terrarium.
The kitchen has a mix of customised soft white units and Ikea designs. Filament light bulbs set flush with the ceiling wash the place in a lovely warm glow. From its patinated refectory table, bought from a Paris dealer, you see greenery in two directions, most impressively in the second glazed courtyard and adjoining plant room.
There are glassed-in spaces on all sides of this outer courtyard. To the left is a plant room, not the hardware kind that most of us think of but rather a place where Downes flexes her green fingers and grows everything from papyrus to clivia, a South African bush lily. Downes is currently studying horticulture at the Botanic Gardens and her talent in this area is evident at every turn.
On the far side of this herbaceous square is a bathroom that features another of de Paor’s signature flourishes, a sunken bath where you can soak up the greenery in total privacy.
From the kitchen, the backstairs climbs up to the main bedroom and its en suite shower room. This dramatic space overlooks all the theatre of the basin’s fountains as the water dances and light refracts rainbows from time to time. While for access only, the roof has been decked, and is punctuated with potted plants including dwarf mountain pines.
For those who revel in small but beautifully formed spaces that fizz with personality, this is a home worth viewing.
The property, which extends to 105sq m (1,130sq ft) and has a D1 Ber rating, is on the market seeking €725,000 through a Sherry FitzGerald.
Number 12 Geraldine Street, also reimagined by Tom de Paor, sold last August for €850,000, according to the Property Price Register. Also with two bedrooms and two-bathrooms, it measured 118sq m (1,270sq ft) and had a B3 Ber-rating.
