Garden blooms close to city centre
Rathmines, Dublin 6
Asking price: €1.15m
Agent: Savills New Homes (01) 618 1300
SMALL developments of ultra-modern homes aimed at executives requiring a short stroll to the city centre are increasingly dotting the Rathmines landscape, as part of its transformation from student flatland to a property hotspot.
Gone are the down-at-heel bedsits with just a super sur for heating. Rathmines is on a rapid ascent, with the help of new amenities such as Fallon & Byrne in the Swan Centre and the hip revamp of the Stella Theatre, the art-deco cinema once famed among students for its cheap tickets and hard chairs.
On the heels of The Brambles, a €1m-plus pair of contemporary semidetached homes off Blackberry Lane, came Whitfield Grove, a development on Church Avenue that’s made up of just nine houses and five apartments. Four of the homes being built at Whitfield Grove are from The Garden Residences section, namely a row of four-bed terraced houses.
No. 12 The Garden Residences, which has 1,991 sq ft of space spread across three floors, is currently on the market and is priced from €1.15m. Like its neighbours, it has a rear urban garden with a patio that was designed by Green Shoots Garden Design, a landscaping firm that won a gold medal at Bloom in 2016.
Its façade is finished in Ibstock’s redhued Chailey Rustic Stock brick, with granite to the sills of the Scandinavian alu-clad windows from NorDan. There is further planting by Green Shoots to the front, as well as a driveway that can accommodate two cars and provision for electric car charging points.
Inside, there are extra-high ceilings to the hallway, which leads to a front reception room and to a rear kitchen/ diner with large sliding glazed doors opening onto the southwest-facing garden and patio. The bespoke kitchen is fitted with sleek German handleless units from Rotpunkt, Quarella quartz countertops, and integrated Neff appliances, including an induction hob and an oven with a self-cleaning function.
There is Italian porcelain tiling to the kitchen and its adjoining utility room. The latter space comes with a Miele washing machine and dryer. There is underfloor heating and recessed LED lighting throughout the ground floor, which is also home to a large guest WC.
On the first floor, there is a second reception room overlooking the garden, storage space, and two bedrooms, one of which is en suite. The second floor has two further en-suite bedrooms; one leads out to a private roof terrace and the other, the master suite, comes with a large fully fitted walk-in wardrobe.
The ensuites and bathrooms are fitted with Duravit sanitaryware, wallhung toilets with concealed cisterns, Hansgrohe taps, back-lit demisting mirrors, clever built-in storage niches with glass shelves and Corian surfaces, and Italian porcelain tiling. The bespoke bedroom wardrobes are supplied by Cawley’s Furniture.
A mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system has been installed in the airtight, A3-rated home. This system constantly draws out warm, moist air from the kitchen, utility room and bathrooms, retains the heat energy in this air, and then uses it to heat filtered fresh air that is drawn in from outside. An air-source heat pump provides heating and hot water.
The Garden Residences are about a 15-minute walk from St Stephen’s Green and a ten-minute walk from the Beechwood Luas stop.