Bright, elegant living on Hollybank Avenue for €975,000

• Published date: 23 March 2023
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

The Newcastle-designed kitchen is the hub of this home, which is just a seven-minute walk to the popular village of Ranelagh. A lovely feature is an entire wall of hidden presses lurking behind wooden panelling that runs along the left-hand side of the kitchen. You would be forgiven for thinking that this is just for aesthetics but, in fact, this is where each of the three children who currently live here have separate lockers to store their stuff, allowing the 137sq m (1,475sq ft) house to be streamlined and clutter-free

It is really a lovely home and the off-white palette – with Little Greene's French Grey Pale in the kitchen – really bounces light inside. It provides a super backdrop allowing colour from art and furniture to take centre stage. Some of the family's vast collection of books are stored within new built-in units in the front drawingroom overlooking the front garden, which is framed by a maple tree with Chinese wisteria providing bursts of purple around the new front door in early summer.

The family undertook quite a bit of work since they purchased their home back in 2007. Firstly they converted what had earlier been described as an airing cupboard upstairs into a bathroom, a convenient move when they had an au pair after baby number one arrived.

The main job undertaken was the kitchen extension: "When we bought there was a bathroom at the back. The kitchen wasn't well laid out and the rear deck was broken." They credit Ronan Carey of Newcastle Design for suggesting they plumb and electrify a shed in the back garden to house the washing machine and dryer. Indeed many will appreciate the lack of noise that laundry machines...