‘We are looking for another period house we can do up’
Children’s author and editor Síne Quinn and her husband Martin Bradley bought their Edwardian terraced red-brick at Summerville Park in Rathmines 12 years ago, when their twin sons were aged around five.
Six years ago, as the boys grew, so too did the couple’s period home: Síne and Martin added a side extension to create a large kitchen/diner and extended up into the attic to create a guest bedroom, a shower room and a study.
This latter space is home to two desks that Síne and Martin use for work; in November, Síne held a virtual launch of Holy Shocking Saints: The Extraordinary Lives of 12 Irish Saints, her new book with illustrator Margaret Anne Suggs.
The same month, Síne and Martin put their Rathmines house on the market for €825,000 through Knight Frank so they could hunt for a larger home in the area. After all, their twins have just turned 17 and are 6ft tall.
“We’ve been here 12 years and we really love it, so we’re quite torn about moving, but we want another creative process and somewhere slightly bigger for the twins,” says Síne. “We used to live in Irishtown before Rathmines and we loved moving to a different area and discovering it.”
The couple are keen to take on another fixerupper, but a dearth of supply in Dublin 6’s period-home market within their budget means they may have to cast their net wider.
“We would love to stay in the area, but there’s not a huge amount coming up on the market, so we are thinking about broadening our location search,” says Síne. “We have viewed about eight or nine properties, mostly in Rathmines, Terenure and Rathgar. Some of them were suitable and we did bid on them, and some went out of our price range. One had too much work to be done on it in terms of planning.
“We are looking for another period house that we can do up. It’s nice to be able to put our own mark on a home and add to it and, realistically, any place that is in turnkey condition is in such demand that prices are sky high.
“We would ideally like to have the same set-up as we have now — three bedrooms with an attic conversion, but with larger proportions and maybe more of a garden, as well as two reception rooms and a separate kitchen. We were very glad to have separate living rooms during lockdown.”