Address: Kilfoylan, Lower Glenageary Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin
Price: €1,550,000
Agent: Lisney
When the couple living in Kilfoylan, an Edwardian house in Glenageary, were planning an extension to their home 16 years ago, the architect asked them what their priorities were. Number one, they said, light; number two, light; and number three, light. So they extended their kitchen – which now runs across the back of the house – with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and doors opening on to the back garden, and added a skylight over the dining area.
The light-filled kitchen/dining/family room and the 52m (170ft) long back garden are the two standout features of the house, which has been the couple’s home for 37 years. It’s been a great family home, they say, with the flexibility to adapt to their family’s changing needs. Their two daughters now “have their own crew”’ and live nearby. “We had four generations around the table recently, and the grandchildren often come and stay overnight.”
The couple plan to downsize in the area, so Kilfoylan, Lower Glenageary Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin, a 210sq m (2,260 sq ft) five-bed, semidetached Edwardian house, is now for sale for €1.55 million through Lisney. It’s a handsome period home with original features like the fireplaces in the two reception rooms, ceiling coving, and original Anaglypta lining the walls below the dado rail in the hall.
Art fills the walls – one of the owners is a writer and illustrator of children’s books – and walls in the reception rooms are painted in bold colours: deep red in one; dark blue in another. New owners will likely upgrade the house, perhaps adding en suites to some of the bedrooms, but it’s a house likely to interest buyers looking for a period home. It has a C3 Ber.
Kilfoylan is on busy Lower Glenageary Road near the junction with Silchester Park. Two reception rooms open on either side of the hall at the front of the house. On the left is a large study where walls painted a deep red are lined with bookshelves. The original fireplace – now with a coal-effect gas fire – has a timber mantelpiece and pretty inset tiles.
On the other side of the hall is the livingroom, a long room stretching from the front to a glass door at the other end that opens down a few steps into the kitchen/diningroom at the back of the house. The livingroom is painted a deep blue and has a wood-burning stove inset into another original fireplace with timber surround and inset tiles. Both rooms have deep coving painted white.
Entrance hall 
Livingroom 
Open-plan kitchen/diningroom/family room 
Study 
Main bedroom 
Downstairs shower room 
The long back garden is mainly in lawn 
The house has a redbrick patio to the rear
A downstairs shower room has a jazzily tiled floor created by the owner. A small breakfastroom has utilities – washing machine and space for a dryer – neatly concealed in floor-to-ceiling cupboards. A small bookshelf here is fitted into cream brickwork that would once have surrounded a range.
Wide steps lead down into the open-plan kitchen/dining/family room, floored with oak. A wide island is topped with grey Corian, with units below painted a sage green. Other units are cream and there’s a pale green splashback behind the Rangemaster cooker. On the other side of the island, there’s plenty of room for a large dining table and space for grandchildren’s toys. Wide steps from here lead back up into the livingroom.
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Upstairs, there are five bedrooms – two doubles and three singles – and a family bathroom. The largest main bedroom at the front of the house has two windows overlooking Lower Glenageary Road, and built-in wardrobes. The windows at the front, like those downstairs, are double-glazed, dulling the noise of traffic from the road outside. A smaller bedroom at the back is fitted out as a dressingroom. The attic is fully floored.
The long back garden is mainly in lawn, filled with mature trees and shrubs, with a fruit and vegetable garden at its end. A brick patio just outside the back of the house looks original but was relatively recently installed; a sandstone patio at the bottom of the garden catches the evening sun. Some of the apple trees date back to the time the house was built in 1909, the owners think, including a James Grieve apple tree; halfway down the garden is a pink flowering quince and a ‘Bengal Crimson’ rose grown from a cutting from Helen Dillon’s garden. There are rhubarb, gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes and a covered garden bench at the very end.
There is room to park several cars in the gravelled front garden. A partially covered side passage leads to the back garden. The house is on bus routes and within walking distance of Glenageary Dart station.