Having decided to move back to Ireland from London, Sharon and Declan, were keen to find a home that would suit them and their three teenage children. ‘We were living in Kew at the time and were really keen to find something in Dublin that was close to the city centre and good schools.’ It was the elegant exterior of this Victorian home in Rathgar that attracted their attention and they could see that with work the interior could be equally as striking and had the potential to be transformed into a spacious family home. ‘We could see from the start that the house was basically sound, it looked so unloved but it had lovely proportions with a charming staircase leading up to the front door, it was split up into a warren of bedsits and offices but the shell of the rooms were there, all with lovely high ceilings with many of the original features still left intact,’ says Sharon.
For visual effect Sharon wallpapered the stairs to the basement with an Orla Kiely wallpaper, Multi Stem from Harlequin