Forever Home

Margaret knew it was time to downsize once her daughters flew the nest, and so she decided to pour her heart and soul into restoring the Dublin home she grew up in.

'This was always such a happy house,’ says Margaret of the three-bedroom terraced home in Dublin where she was brought up. ‘It always seemed to be full of people, cousins from England staying, and lots of friends and family visiting; my parents were very hospitable and kept an open house.’ Margaret inherited the house from her late mother. ‘It was so sad to see the house empty,’ she says. ‘For the next year I just had someone caretaking it, and postponed making any decisions about what to do with it.’

In early 2015 Margaret decided that it was time for her to downsize from her own large family home, as two of her three daughters were now married with homes of their own. All three of them, Rebecca, Emma and Vicky, started a campaign to keep the house in the family. ‘I had initially thought I would buy a smaller house in the same area as I was living, but the girls were horrified at the thought of their grandparent’s house being sold or rented out. They had spent so much time there when they were growing up, as my parents were a huge help to me in rearing my family, so they remembered it as a happy house and had a deep attachment to it.’