A couple with a penchant for revamping their homes moved into 8 Garville Road in Rathgar, Dublin 6, six years ago. The double-fronted Victorian house – bought for €1.235 million in 2019, according to the Property Price Register – had been divided into separate living quarters and needed a complete makeover. With the help of “a good builder”, work began more or less right away, and now the villa-style house built in the 1830s is a larger property that combines period and modern styles with some clever design features. The owners, who’ve lived in neighbourhood since the 1990s, are rightsizing, they say, with plans to live nearby.
Number 8 Garville Road, Rathgar, Dublin 6, a 287sq m (3,089sq ft) five-bedroom semidetached house, is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty for €2.495 million. It has a B1 Ber, with insulation including wraparound cladding at the back of the house and internal cladding at the front. It makes great use of windows and rooflights and even has a small internal courtyard off the main bedroom.
The couple kept future-proofing in mind as they revamped their home: three of the five bedrooms and three bathrooms are on the bottom, garden-level floor – and there are no steps anywhere at this level, accessed through the door beside the front steps. Overall, upstairs and down, it’s a bright spacious home furnished with an eclectic mix of modern and period furniture, and original art on walls everywhere. It’s presented in meticulous condition.
Steep granite steps lead up to a new pale-blue front door, opening into a front hall floored with oak parquet. A reception room running from the front to the back of the house opens on the left: it has its original sanded floor and original marble fireplace, restored ceiling coving, new period-style centre rose and tall double-glazed sash windows. A study on the right of the hall is painted a deep blue-grey.
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A double bedroom off the hall behind the study has a centre rose and sash window overlooking the back garden. There’s a smart shower room beside it and opposite, cupboards concealing a washer and dryer. A room at the very end of the hall with French doors opening into it is labelled a “study/gym/bedroom 5” in the agents’ brochure. It is bright, with nearly floor-to-ceiling corner windows and another tall narrow window on the other side of a low bookshelf.
The real life of the house is downstairs, accessed either via the staircase from the top hall or from the door at the side of the front steps. A garage that was once converted into separate accommodation is now integrated with the house, providing useful extra space. All downstairs is floored with oak parquet.
The large kitchen/living/diningroom stretching nearly the full width of the house at the back is airy and bright, with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors opening on to a large patio and rooflights over the kitchen and livingroom area. A large island, quartz-topped like the countertop, has a sink with Quooker tap, lots of storage and a heater at one end next to seating. A large pantry off it has a tiled floor, sink and lots of shelves.
A door off the livingroom opens into a room fitted out as a child’s bedroom, with a glass sliding door opening on to the back patio. There’s an open utility area in a hall leading to the front of the house: a washer and dryer are concealed in floor-to-ceiling cupboards opposite a quartz-topped counter and sink. At the end of this hall at the front of the house are a smart family bathroom and another double bedroom.
The main bedroom is positioned between the two downstairs halls: a door from it opens into a good-sized double walk-in wardrobe and a door from here opens into a smart, fully-tiled bathroom. Most surprising is the small internal courtyard – French doors open from the bedroom into it. At the front of the house is a good-sized family room with a wood-burning stove.
In all, there are four/five bedrooms and four bathrooms in the house: at Christmas, says one of the owners, it accommodated six adults and four children, with each family having their own space.
The back garden has something for everyone. The pale porcelain-tiled patio is very much an outdoor room. A few steps up lead to a small lawn, a profusion of trees and bushes (including birch, holly, myrtle and a quince), a woodland area at the back, lots of decking and paths winding through it. The decking was a Covid lockdown project, says the owner: he kept going through the second lockdown and built a children’s fort around a mature palm tree.
There’s an electric-car charging point and room to park two cars in the front garden, crucial on this narrow Dublin 6 street between Frankfort Avenue and Rathgar Road.
