Address: Moybrook, Avoca Avenue, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Price: €3,295,000
Agent: Lisney Sotheby’s International
Sometimes houses talk to you, says one of the owners of a meticulously refurbished house on Avoca Avenue in Blackrock, Co Dublin. And Moybrook, a house built in the 1970s, attracted her in spite of itself. It had been rented for several years when the couple looked at it 13 years ago; the gardens were overgrown, it was dark, damp and the decor was dated. But “I loved the location, felt it would be a really good investment if we could turn it around,” one of them says.
It had earlier been the home of one of Aer Lingus’s first pilots, Aidan Quigley, and a propeller in the hall over the front door is a reminder of that. (A copy of his memoir, Green is My Sky, will stay in the house.)
They bought it for €910,000 in 2013, according to the Property Price Register, and replaced floors, replumbed, rewired, installed new underground mains water pipes, an air-to-water heat pump and a Lunos mechanical ventilation system and, of course, insulated it. It now has a B2 Ber.
Moybrook, Avoca Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin, a four/five-bedroom 265sq m (2,852sq ft) detached house on 0.226 acres of landscaped gardens is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty for €3.295 million, more than three times the 2013 sale price.
Two factors, apart from the cost of rebuilding, help explain this, they say: 2013 was the bottom of the market after the 2008 property crash, they were cash buyers and there was a problem with title that had deterred other buyers. They took on the expensive business of sorting that out, a process that took several years post purchase. Moybrook also comes with an 18sq m (193sq ft) insulated and heated garden room and an extra 15sq m (161sq ft) of attic space.
The thing the couple likes most about the house they’re now downsizing from is its brightness: it’s decorated throughout in creamy shades, with Velux windows in various rooms adding light. A long driveway bordered by cypress trees, box hedging and a huge myrtle with red bark that started out as a shrub, leads to the front door. The front hall – tiled with cream tiles – is particularly bright, with a Velux over the galleried landing above. There are built-in closets on either side of the front door and a convenient office space has been created under the stairs.
On the left of the hall is a long bright drawingroom with a small wood-burning stove in a simple fireplace. Frosted double doors open into the livingroom section of the kitchen/diningroom/livingroom, which stretches across the back of the house.
Gated entrance into Moybrook 
Entrance hallway 
Drawingroom 
Connected livingroom, kitchen and diningroom 
Kitchen area 
Diningroom area
A wide bay window in the livingroom looks over the back garden and glazed French doors open on to the patio. A long Skovby dining table between the livingroom and the kitchen seats 10; a timber-topped peninsula separating diningroom from kitchen seats five. Kitchen units are cream, flooring a pale engineered laminate. A decent-sized utility room opens off the kitchen. Other downstairs accommodation includes a toilet and a sittingroom/study with built-in cabinets – it could be used as another bedroom.
Upstairs there are four double bedrooms off a galleried landing, two of them en suite, and a smart family bathroom. The main bedroom runs from the front to the back of the house; a large walk-in dressingroom separates the bedroom from the fully-tiled en suite, which looks over the front garden.
Steep stairs lead from the landing to the attic where there’s a home office under two Velux windows; there’s also extensive under-eaves storage space and potential to convert it to more accommodation, subject to planning permission.
Main bedroom 
Back garden 
Garden room
The back garden of Moybrook is as manicured as the interior: paths lead from a large yellow granite patio (with motorised awnings above) around a rectangle of artificial lawn, with box hedging, sculpted bay and birch trees surrounding it. A garden room is called “the cabin”, equipped with a bar, fridge, ice maker and coloured lights; it’s insulated and heated for year-round use.
The long front garden behind granite walls and wrought-iron electric gates has a lot of mature trees, shrubs and a patio area beside the gravelled driveway and plenty of room for parking.
Avoca Avenue is one of Blackrock’s most interesting roads, with its mix of stately Victorians and more modern 20th and some 21st century homes. Moybrook is near the corner with Grove Road, a reasonable walk from the shopping centres on the Blackrock bypass, Blackrock village and the Dart.
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