The ideal place to live if you want to trade up

KINGSFORD PARK in Douglas is the sort of place you don’t stumble across unless you go looking for it, but when houses here hit the market people marvel about its privacy.

It is a cul-de-sac off a cul-de-sac, inside, up the back and around a bend in Grange Heights, where 22 Georgian-style detached houses have been built and matured since the early 1980s.

For sale here is 1 Kingsford Park, a five-bedroom family home.

At €430,000, it is an ideal trading up house, says Liz Horgan of Harris Properties, given that it is detached, has good gardens (there’s a great back garden, walled in, with a spreading ash tree and a prospect of independent rear access) it has five bedrooms and quality living space.

In fact, the house is immaculate, having been given a major modernising upgrade in the last few years.

It has a new maple floors in most of the ground floor, excluding the kitchen, has a new high-spec kitchen also with units in maple with cherry wood inlay, cool-to-the-touch Velstone worktops and a tiled floor.

Living rooms are good, the smaller family room has a bay window, while the lounge is a front-to-back affair, running 26’ through the house and 13’ wide.

This room has a chunky large red brick fireplace, with maple mantle and marble hearth, with a hefty cast-iron wood burning stove to pump out heat. This room also has a bay window to the front and double doors to the back garden.

The ground floor has a guest loo squeezed in just inside the front door and a long utility with garden access, while another door from here leads to the extended garage which holds out conversion potential.

The upper floor has five bedrooms (one is currently used as an office) with a wall of built-ins in the master bedroom reducing the room size to 12’ by 10’.

This room, to the back of the house, has distant views down to Cork harbour, given the house’s position up on the hills of Grange. The en suite is extensively tiled, has a pumped shower and a towel warming radiator.

The other four bedrooms all have built-ins and decor, as in the rest of the house, is finished to a high level with contemporary style.

No 1 is right by the entrance to Kingsford, where the neighbouring houses are ranged around a green, with high block walls giving privacy to its gardens. Planning has been given for back garden access from the road outside, handy for anyone into keeping boats, campers or cars.