Loadsamoney and the domestic Wurlitzer
If you’re seeking diversion on a wet Thursday afternoon, then might I suggest you have a look at the Property Supplement of the Irish Times, in which you can see what happens when Estate Agent puffery is run through a journalistic mangle. The front page lead on May 15, featured Eagle Lodge, a nice 1820s house in Blackrock — a posh Dublin suburb. It is, burbled the Property Editor, “a show-stopper with echoes of Versailles”.
Not many people can boast that their kitchen doubles as a ballroom, but the owner of Eagle Lodge says that hers can take 80 for supper with dancing to follow.
The marble-trimmed kitchen, with its eight dishwashers and twin Agas, is one of the marvels of this 743 sq.m. (8,000 sq.ft) house, which started out as a modest dower house to long-gone Frascati House.
Other delights include “a 24-ft cellar accessed from a lift in the Conservatory”, the “superb dressing room off the main bedroom, which was assembled from the mahogany fittings of Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland”, the utility room that is “decorated in French chateau-style with floor-to-ceiling hand-painted units, marble worktops and a chandelier — one of 20 throughout the house”. The working area of the kitchen is “eye-poppingly opulent and fantastically well-organised with its row of under-counter dishwashers, and its vast marble-topped central island which, at the touch of a button, rises up to reveal a bank of hidden appliances — from ice-cream maker to bread mixer.” French doors from the kitchen lead out to a patio which, naturellment, has “an outdoor kitchen, including a restaurant-style grill for cooking steaks”. (No beefburgers here.)
But the coup de grace is
a large study which, as it has no natural light, has been turned into an atmospherically dark room with walls lined in leather bound books that are in fact elaborate storage files.
Flann O’Brien, where are you when we need you?
Fact: The Irish Times was once a serious newspaper.
