Period Sandymount five-bed with dazzling modern interior for €2.6m

A Sandymount redbrick that combines period and modern style is for sale for the third time since it was built in 2002. Number 63 Sydney Parade Avenue, one of a pair of three-storey-over-garden-level semidetached five-beds, was last sold in 2021 – for €2.25 million, according to the Property Price Register – by a couple with three young children who wanted to move to be closer to their families.

After buying it in 2017 for €1.925 million, they had spent more than €400,000 refurbishing it to suit their taste for a modern home; the young couple who bought it have left it pretty much as they found it. Like the last owners, they have very young children and are selling to be closer to family. It’s back on the market with a price rise of €350,000, with Sherry FitzGerald looking for €2.6 million for the 315sq m (3,400sq ft) five-bed. It has a B2 Ber. The neighbouring house, number 65, sold for €2.35 million in January 2022 according to the Property Price Register.

Built to look like a period house on the outside, with period-style features inside – decorative cornicing, centre roses and matching marble fireplaces – in the two reception rooms, it has a dazzlingly bright garden-level kitchen/dining/family room designed by architects Bright Design. This is the most striking feature of the house: open plan, with walls painted white, cleverly angled rooflights, floor-to-ceiling windows, sliding patio doors and a limed oak floor throughout, it’s a very bright, uncluttered space.

Everything can be concealed behind soft-close doors in the Porter & Jones kitchen, which is dominated by a large, pale Silestone quartz-topped island which has a sink, Quooker tap and seating for four. Behind the induction hob is a dramatic Italian marble splashback (by Miller Brothers). The floors, like those on the first floor, are limed oak. Just off the kitchen is a large walk-in pantry and beside it, a large utility room as well as a smart toilet and a storage room, both floored with grey ceramic tiles.

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A seating area next to a huge floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window is partly separated from the dining space next to sliding patio doors opening on to the back garden. At the front of the house is a children’s playroom with pretty hand-painted murals by Belén Marcuzzi and a painted and scuffed pitch pine floor.

A door opens into a side passage with cedar panelling. Two sets of stairs – one next to this door, the other near the back of the house – lead up to the first floor. The timber stairs towards the back of the house have a glass banister and strip lighting, leading to the mezzanine area on the first floor that looks down into the kitchen through a glass balcony.

Upstairs is the more traditional part of the house: the drawingroom at the front, with panelled walls painted a soft grey, has a box bay with sash windows overlooking the front garden. Both this room and the diningroom – separated by a wide arch with double doors – are furnished with smart modern furniture complemented by a few period items. In the corner of the diningroom is a butler’s pantry with a sink. The diningroom opens straight on to the mezzanine seating space, making it very bright.

There’s a small en suite double bedroom with a wall of wardrobes, now used as a study, at the end of the front hall. Upstairs are four more bedrooms, two en suite. The main bedroom, like the drawingroom below, has a box bay window looking over the front garden, cornicing and a centre rose, laminate flooring and built-in wardrobes. The smart en suite is part-tiled with dark grey tiles and has a shower with a very large rainwater shower head.

A double bedroom at the back of the house has a similar fit out and a very modern en suite with Carrera marble wall and floor tiles and a Lusso stone oval wash-hand basin. Another bedroom is decorated as a nursery, with murals painted on the wall. The family bathroom, like the en suites, is smart, with a bath, Porcelanosa tiles, oval stone wash-hand basin and brass fittings.

A granite patio in the back garden opens on to an artificial lawn: the walls are bordered with plants and shrubs and there’s a large tree at the bottom of the garden. There’s room for several cars in the gravelled front garden behind electronic gates. Clydare is at the Strand Road end of Sydney Parade Avenue.