Outside The Box

The owner of this Dublin home is very definite that he is not a ‘creative’ but the process of renovating and extending his new home awakened in him an interest in architecture and the process of design.

- Barbara Egan

In 2013 the couple were looking for a place to call home. They really liked the area in which they were renting and decided to look for a property there. They had spotted another house for sale on the same road some time earlier, but found that they would be bidding against a friend and dropped out. Then they had the opportunity to watch that house being renovated, which engaged their interest, and they decided that they could tackle a renovation too.

Once that decision was made, it didn’t matter how bad the initial condition of the house was, which was just as well as they describe the state of the house as ‘atrocious’, and they were the only bidders. The house had a basic two-room apartment upstairs, an office downstairs and had not been renovated any time in the recent past, but it was well-built Victorian housing stock, in the right location and the couple were convinced. ‘It was horrible but obviously had potential,’ they explain. ‘Also it had a generous back garden and no houses opposite. We bought it and then found out about our tastes in art and architecture through the process of renovation. Once we were committed to renovation, we were quite excited by the project. There’s always going to be stress in a project, but that was outweighed by the excitement of transformation.’