She exhausted all of the residential listings so she went onto the commercial ones.
You think outside the box.
It's different. It's not your average house.
Or better still, you take a box and rethink the inside of it.
We're in effect, building a building within a building.
It's not a house. It doesn't feel like a house.
It doesn't resemble a house but that's the whole point of this.
Since Andrew and Avril first met 10 years ago,
they've dreamed of owning their first home.
This time lat year that dream came true
but there've been a few sacrifices along the way.
After we bought the warehouse we knew we needed to save money
to actually do the renovation of it.
So Andrew's mum and dad allowed us to come and live with them.
The thing is we're actually living at the bottom of the garden.
It's kind of a compact little space.
There's room for a bed and there's about this much room on either side.
We moved things around a few times until we got it
so that it was as nice as it can be, given the confines of the situation.
We were renting before and it was 700 a month plus bills.
When we moved back here, we're saving about 700 a month.
Which is quite a bit. Significant.
I think I realised how frequently I use the toilet.
No cups of tea after 9 o'clock cos that means..
So that hasn't been the best experience.
It's all for a good cause though.
I suppose I would've thought why wouldn't they go for something like
a semi-detached house in the suburbs with a little bit of land.
It'd be much easier a project than what they've undertaken.
Having saved 90,000 euro, Andrew and Avril were determined to secure a
foothold in the sought after South Dublin town of Dun Laoghaire.
Something that was always going to require a bit of lateral thought.
We'd looked at a few interesting, different places.
By chance, I think it was a funeral parlour that I saw that was being
advertised and we went to look at that and it was sold before we got anywhere.
Then I said the commercial listings is something that I haven't looked a yet.
We found this then and it's different.
It's not your average house.
When I brought my sister to see it the first time, we drove up and
she said where is it. I said that's it there.
She was like but it doesn't even look like a house.
I said yeah, it's not supposed to.
Andrew and Avril's future home is a disused storage unit
on a side street in Dun Laoghaire.
The asking price was 120,000 which we couldn't afford.
So we went back with an offer of 90,000 to the estate agent.
His first reaction was come back with a sensible offer.
The total cost in the end was 105,000.
Wow. Hi guys. Hi Dermot.
Nice to meet you.
So this is what you want to turn into a home. Yeah.
Wow. If possible.
I like that look of something that's a bit kind of shabby and all this
industrial stuff, if that could be kept it would be really nice.
Is this your boundary? Yes.
There's no garden, there's no courtyard
or anything hiding behind there? No. Nothing.
So this is your boundary. And that.
There's a pub there and an accountants there.
And then over here you've got double yellow lines.
You're hemmed in. It's a loading bay.
Trucks stop just there.
You don't even have a footpath.
No. On this side there's a bit of a one but there, no.
It's got two boundary walls that are onto nothing.
It's got double yellow lines on one side.
It's right out onto a pubic street.
It's dark, it's cold.
It feels big on the ground floor but it's not big.
It's probably about 1,400 square foot maximum.
It gets so much brighter when you get up here.
This is the brighter of the two rooms.
Smaller though, isn't it.
It's a lot smaller than downstairs in feel.
It's that ceiling height downstairs that makes that feel like it's ten sitting rooms.
It's one of the tricks of architecture.
The high ceilings make everything feel so much bigger.
We'll go and have a look next door.
This is room number two.
Is this all your stuff? Yes, it is.
Okay. You haven't even moved in yet. Where are you going to put all this?
Yet to be decided.
We collect stuff. I collect stuff.
Antiques wouldn't be the word really.
No. I don't like antiques.
It's kind of halfway between antiques and junk. Yeah.
Exactly.
We have a couple of those.
You know nowadays they have broadband.
It's nice to look at it.
I love colour and painting furniture and kind of eclectic combinations.
Andrew doesn't find that particularly restful so..
This is really refreshing.
It's a very, very brave thing to do, to buy something like this
and then to try and turn it into a home.
What's the dream for this place?
It has to be a home really in the end cos that's where you live.
It's a house and a home.
If possible keep the brickwork and the metal and the concrete.
To have concrete floors and exposed wiring, electrical conduits.
An urban Americanised kind of loft idea.
I'd love a bridge if possible. To put a bridge in somehow.
Maybe a mezzanine as well connecting the bridge to something else.
This is a garage space slap bang in the heart of Dun Laoghaire,
right in the middle of a car park.
What kind of money have we got to do it?
260,000. 260,000.
Okay. That seems okay.
My only fear is that because it was offices and it was industrial,
we're changing this into a home now so it's going to have to
comply with the current regulations.
This is a new build.
So it's going to have to be ultra efficient.
So the cost of that..
I'm still quietly confident.
Even we'd like something on the roof.
Something on the roof? Yeah. If you could walk on the roof.
An outdoor space. Yeah.
Outdoor space, okay.
Right okay. You tell me that after.
The best views from this house are from the roof.
From the very top you can see the Bailey Lighthouse,
you can see back into Sutton and you've got this amazing
church spire from Dun Laoghaire Church dominating the whole skyline.
They have a dream and a vision of how they want it to look.
My job in all of this is to make what they have into that dream.
At the moment, there are so many things standing in their way
that that's the real challenge.
This is no simple conversion.
Dermot will have to re-imagine the entire building from the ground up
and before any work can begin, the accumulated bulk of Avril's
magpie-like devotion to collecting needs to be thinned out.
We need to get this stuff out of here but I guess Avril has the
idea of having an eclectic feel. So it certainly will be.
This is fabulous. Look, you don't get hairdryers like that any more.
Avril does have an eye for unusual furniture and bits and pieces.
I like all kinds of different styles.
I think you can kind of mix up new stuff and old stuff and
that kind of makes the atmosphere.
Look at these. I was going to make lampshades from them.
A veteran of car boot sales all over South Dublin,
Avril wastes no time in tracking down an event in nearby Glasthule.
It's new and untested but it's local.
It's quite disappointing but look, it's not raining.
It could've been a lot worse.
It is what it is.
3 euros.
Go on.
Yay, my first sale of the day!
The best of luck with your venture.
I've sold two items. A grand total of 5 euro profit.
The one redeeming feature of this whole experience has been that
when I come to flea markets or car boot sales in general,
I'm loading up the car with all the stuff that I've bought
and I haven't had a chance to do that this time round so
that's one positive point.
So.. Yeah.
On a crisp February morning 3 weeks later, Dermot returns to
Dun Laoghaire confident that he's not only nailed a design
but somehow managed to bring it in under budget.
I think I have something that works.
As we sit here freezing.
Insulation is going to be the first thing. Great.
At the moment, if this was to be turned into a house
you'd live on the ground floor and sleep on the first floor
and I think we should swap it over.
What I mean then is ceiling heights as well.
We need to lower the ceiling heights on the ground floor and
increase the ceiling heights on the first floor so take this
and almost turn the whole thing on upside down so we're
getting a great big space upstairs and the living space downstairs.
We're going to have to get light into the middle of the house.
Down through an atrium is the only way and we can get all the
south light in from that side, down into the middle of the building.
This is a little model of how I think it might turn out.
To create a usable space and make sense of a building that was never
designed for habitation, I'm going to divide the open ground floor into
two bedrooms, a bathroom and a bike store.
Upstairs there'll be a large open plan space with a kitchen,
utility and a living-dining area lit bit new windows,
including a large wrap-around corner screen.
Above that a new mezzanine floor will have a storage space and a
craft room overlooking a full height atrium.
With the stairs as a centrepiece, this void will rise up from the
first floor to a raised butterfly roof.
At the very top of the building glazed doors will open onto a
secluded roof terrace with spectacular views right down over the harbour.
This will be urban living on a grand scale.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I sense a bit of a hesitation. There is a bit.
I guess I'm taking it in a bit.
My feeling isn't initially what I thought I would feel.
Questions. You seem a bit dubious.
I am. I'm dubious about the stairs.
What are you dubious about the stair?
It seems to be a very significant element. Exactly.
That's the idea.
I wanted to create the stairs that would wind its way up through the whole house.
These are some of the images that I pulled up of buildings
and references so these kind of stairs.
I really want this stairs to be the core of the whole thing.
We've got this really funky stairs that meanders its way through the whole house.
I think the stairs looks very designed.
I don't think.. I hadn't that in my head.
If I was to visualise what I thought it would feel like or be like,
I didn't imagine this big stairs in the middle.
I thought you'd be able to see through it or something.
I didn't see it as a ch ch thing that would..
Even on the picture, some of them are really like..
I like it. I like it.
I think with concrete and the use of timber and colours and textures
that it will be what you want it to be.
That's what we asked for. Yeah. Yeah.
It really does encapsulate all of the things that we asked for.
Maybe not in the way we imagined but in a better way I think.
Overall? Overall.
What's the impression? I like it. I wouldn't say I love it.
I love the outside of it but I'm concerned about the stairs.
It's pretty good going actually. Only one thing.
What I'm confident of is that the plan works and the stuff that Avril
wants to make it her home, to make it an Avril house,
that can all be done.
She can't see it right now but I'm okay with that
because I know that it will all end up in the finished house.
By mid-summer with planning permission granted but several
important parts of the design still unresolved, including the stairs,
a uniquely challenging build is under way.
If all goes to plan, Avril and Andrew will be out of their drafty shed
and into a bespoke new home by Christmas.
It's small. It's awkward because there's not much space for the
amount of equipment that we need to bring in.
We've no outside space, we've no garden.
Everything has to be kept inside. Machinery, tools.
Because the area's small inside, we're going to be moving everything
from one side of the room to the other. Back again, back again.
The project itself is a challenge.
It's different and we're in effect building a building within the building.
It's great to see the demolition starting.
It's really opened up the space.
I can see the extent of the floor space that we now have
which is very promising.
Hi guys. Hello. Hi.
It's exciting, isn't it. Very.
How are you doing? Good, thanks.
Are you glad to see it started?
I was just thinking. Oh God.
Is there any way we could keep the ceiling boards?
Are you talking about the joists, the ones hanging down?
Both actually. I think if the big ones were sanded.
We could put them on the walls or make kitchen doors or something.
We'll have to look at how difficult it is.
If they're salvageable, we'll salvage them.
Don't say that!
Avril is obsessed with salvaging everything.
It's funny because it's Avril all over.
As soon as she walked into the place, all she saw was all these materials.
The old ceiling joists. They're fine and they're aged but
they all have to be kept now and stored on site,
as if it isn't hard enough to do what they're doing.
They're basically working in a box.
They have no outside space.
They have to keep everything within that building.
I'm just staying out of that one.
Leave it between Avril and Damien and let them sort it out.
The drawings were done months ago.
When they saw it last night physically, they got freaked out.
They took the ceiling out, I went ooh, it's really small again.
This is unacceptable.
It's incredibly frustrating for the builders. It really is.
If this is to continue, the project could be delayed and
we could be here for weeks.
After 5 weeks of construction, Avril and Andrew's cherished dream
of a unique urban dwelling in Dun Laoghaire is proving a
logistical nightmare for contractors Pascal and Damien Kidd.
We have to be aware that there's people and traffic moving up
and down all the time.
Any type of delivery in here becomes very difficult.
It causes a little bit of mayhem sometimes with the traffic outside.
We just have to have the people here to go out and try to
direct the traffic as best we can.
Life in a restricted commercial zone is not for the faint-hearted.
In the last few days a serious issue has brought the build head to head
with the local council and there's no easy way to resolve it.
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council surveyed the sewer using CCTV and
confirmed that the public sewer is clear.
The survey shows a blockage in the private drain coming from the premises.
The owner has been informed that it's your responsibility.
Basically that's the latest email.
Well that's obviously not the case.
We have video of our own to the contrary.
The road has been excavated in the past just over there.
It's clearly a new section of concrete which has been put in.
Probably during that works, they've caused the drains to
collapse beneath there which is causing a blockage.
When we came in this morning the drains were blocked and we called
out the drainage company and they done a survey of the drains.
What we found is the pipe is crushed but they've said that the
responsibility for the breakage is Andrew's and obviously
he's not too happy about this.
I think it's unfair.
It's a problem on the main line as we have seen from our two investigations.
The responsibility is borderline at the moment.
I can't say to be honest, who is 100% responsible for it.
It really is an engineering issue and I think Avril and Andrew's
engineer needs to meet with he council's engineer and
they need to sit around a table and discuss it
and see who's going to fix it and who's going to pay for it.
You're into a road opening licence which is about 500 euro.
You're into civil works, overtime because it's in the middle of
a public road, it's a one way street,
so more than likely it'll be night-time work.
You're into traffic management, lighting.
You're probably into the guts of 4,000 to 5,000 to do that work.
If that gets pushed back to us, we will have to drop elements
from this project that we will really feel.
It'd be a huge sacrifice.
This has to be resolved.
We know what has to happen. The connection has to be fix.
What has to be resolved is who pays for it and that
needs to happen really quickly.
It's early morning on the South Circular Road and
Avril's about to collect the world's worst passenger.
How are you? Good.
Can you fit in there? I can. I'll put on my seatbelt.
Where are we going? It's a little bit of a surprise.
You know the way I've been going on about salvaged everything.
I found a place that has a nice salvaged something.
What does that mean?
Well you have to see it first.
Jesus. Oh my God.
It nearly goes sideways, doesn't it. Mind!
We're going through red lights now. Brilliant.
That's why I failed my second driving test.
Oops. I think we just passed it.
Brake hard. Into this, over here. This lane here.
Excellent. Let's do that.
Reverse. Reverse.
I would reverse.
Sure we can just go now. Oh my God. Jesus.
Mind the cyclist. Cyclist! Cyclist!
I see him. I see him. I see him.
So it's down here..
So we'll get out here. Stop. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
You didn't do emergency stops in your test, did you?
I love these old junk shops.
I used to trail around these as a kid.
It just to really annoy my mother because I'd arrive back with bits
and pieces and I'd spend 2 weeks painting and restoring it
and then I'd leave it.
I wasn't really about the end result.
I was more about the actual doing it.
My mother has rooms full of rubbish that I have been collecting for years.
I don't really need it and I don't want them back but
she won't throw them into a skip because it's too sentimental.
These are really cool, aren't they.
The shape on them. Yeah, I like this one.
Look at that chair.
With a different upholstery on that. Look at the beautiful lines.
Look at how well that's made. Look at the curve.
Everything on it is really well made.
Do you like it? I do like it, yeah.
You're beginning to sound a bit like me Dermot.
You don't get this but I'm totally like you.
What are we looking for?
A dancing floorboard.
Used to be an old dancing floor.
We thought that it could make a cool wall cladding.
So here it is. Where?
These bits here.
This used to be an old dancing floor.
We were thinking it's maple and maybe we could clean it up
and put it on the big back wall.
These floorboards are to go on the wall? Yeah.
I like the idea that it used to be a dance floor but
now it would be wall cladding.
I get that, that's fine.
I'm just thinking, it's been danced on for years.
This came from the Galtimore Club in Cricklewood in London,
which I think was a pretty cool place by the sound of it.
You think it was a pretty cool place?
Do you have a direct connection with Cricklewood? No.
You're buying a piece of thing from Cricklewood and you don't
even know where Cricklewood is.
No, I haven't a clue.
I think I burst her bubble a tiny bit and she was a bit disappointed but
what are we trying to do here?
Avril is just clinging onto old things, old things that have a story.
I get that a little bit.
My challenge now is to forget about something that has a story.
Let's see if we can get a really cool material that she's going to love.
It's going to be an Andrew and Avril story and
we can put it into the house now.
Instead of having a back story, it's going to have a front story.
I was in love with the idea. Now I've fallen out of love with the idea.
I'm a bit confused in my head about what I actually want.
Yeah.
As the ceiling of the old loading bay makes way for a new first floor
and mezzanine, the vertical profile of this building inside a building is taking shape.
Even if Avril can't quite see it yet.
It's weird how the building kind of expands and contracts almost
in terms of the space.
They took the partition walls away and I thought wow, the space is big.
They took the ceiling out and I went it's got really small again.
Now they're building up the walls with the..
150mm insulation. There'll be another 50 or more on the inside.
So the walls are getting smaller.
I am looking at it thinking that looks quite small now.
But..
Yeah, I.. I don't know.
Yeah. Almost every next bit of building confuses me a bit more
as to what it's going to look like.
The problem is you wanted the place to be a vast spacey feeling.
Upstairs, downstairs, everything.
The bedrooms and the bathroom simply won't be.
It's not a big house.
The upstairs will be a spacious feel but it's not a..
I'm reconciling myself slowly to that realisation.
I hope that the living room area compensates sufficiently for
the boxy feeling of downstairs. I think it will.
If I don't get that different feeling, I will be disappointed.
I'm crossing my fingers and everything else and hoping it'll be okay.
Hoping you're right.
I hope so too.
Another bit of a mystery tour today.
Right now what Avril and Andrew need is reassurance.
Dermot has just the thing to show them.
A similarly sized residence in Rathmines designed by FKL Architects,
known simply as A House.
It's amazing how bright it is.
I'm just thinking in terms of our kind of space.
We have this kind of light.
The sun is kind of over there.
They've introduced this big atrium into the middle
and this lets shafts of light come right into the middle of the house
and then disperses it. It's very similar.
We've got an atrium running up through ours. Ours is over two floors.
We've got a mezzanine looking down into it so
the light quality will be the same.
There's a very limited palette in here so there's just concrete
or else there's the walnut. There's nothing else.
I like that but I ..
Not that it's sterile but it's..
I don't want to be that calm all the time.
You'll probably love to feel calm all the time.
Whereas I love colour and pattern and texture.
You can see the way the material is the finish.
Even the way the steps, the threads are cantilevering from the concrete wall.
There's no support material other than what you see.
This is a solid block supporting all this stuff.
It's one of the nicest parts of the house and it's probably the one
they've tried to make the most invisible.
Dermot says the stairs blends in but to me that stairs is
a very deliberate piece.
It might me minimal but it doesn't blend in.
I like it. Yeah, I know you like it.
I think again it's a statement piece.
It's like a well designed stiletto.
It's elegant, it's sleek, it's beautiful to look at
and doesn't take over the rest of what's going on.
Our stairs is not in the stiletto style in my mind.
It's something a bit edgier that you would notice.
I think one of your first comments when Dermot presented the original
idea about the stairs, was you didn't want it to be too designed looking.
Designed but not entirely.. Not too sophisticated.
Yeah. A little edgy and cool.
You can definitely take design cues from what they've done here.
We're up into the living space and this is kind of where the
similiarities with your house are. Oh I love looking down!
They've got another space that connects the living space
from upstairs to downstairs.
Which works really, really well.
We've a much wider gap than this so our connection is much stronger.
We'll have that same view connecting back up to a garden and the sky.
Even when you're in the kitchen, when you look up from the
kitchen you're going to see the roof garden.
Probably the most reassuring thing about coming here to this space
which is pretty similar in surface area to our own, is to see how the
void and the space works to connect the spaces together.
It's really nice.
Even walking up there, I thought that's so nice.
I know we have that. I don't care what finishes we have on the wall.
We have that one covered.
From the very start of this project the first floor staircase was the
one aspect of the design Andrew and Avril couldn't quite envisage.
Now having seen the bespoke stairs at Rathmines, they know exactly what they want.
We spent last Saturday coming up with what we were hoping the
stairs would look like.
Are you keen on open threads? Is that what you want? Yes.
What we have allowed is 8,500.
With this, budget estimate is about 13,500-14,000.
The main reason is the steel underneath it and supporting
it on steel and the open threads.
The idea of having the steps cantilevering out.
It's an open plan staircase up to mezzanine level.
That's three floors.
I can see how it would work.
From my engineering background, I can see how this could work.
Don't think it'll work for 8,500 euro.
It would work, absolutely.
If you had a 20,000 budget, yes it would work.
But not for 8,500 and that's the problem.
Could you get a stairs that stands itself like that?
That's a stairs. Yeah.
I know but without..
And so in an odd departure from best practice, the clients and
the QS have a stab at designing the new stairs.
A collaboration involving everyone but the architect.
You could but you'll have supports like that which are
not the prettiest and most people cover that up.
We need to go back to the drawing board.
No, I don't think we do.
What have I started!
Oh God.
A week later, with construction of the ground floor steps to the
bike shed poised to begin, another design crisis looms.
I got an urgent text last night. Ring me, ring, me from Andrew and Avril.
The stairs was way too big in the shed part of the house
where they're going to put their bikes and bins.
When they saw it last night physically they got freaked out.
Then there was an urgent text. We need to change it.
I said the only thing we can do now is take it out completely.
If it goes in in concrete it ain't ever coming out.
We can't change it. It's done forever.
We're not going to take out that concrete.
So I thought the easiest thing to do is just to stop the concrete pouring.
It's an unwelcome complication in an already challenging project,
casting serious doubts on Andrew and Avril's hopes of moving in within the next 2 months.
Damien is not happy.
This is unacceptable because if Dermot has to redesign the step..
(CAR HORN)
If Dermot.. (CAR HORN)
It's incredibly frustrating for the builders. It really is.
He's working in impossible conditions.
There's no access, nowhere to store anything.
Traffic wardens, people walking by, health and safety.
It doesn't get any harder.
His only saving grace is that he was so organised his schedule is
running like clockwork and now there's something thrown
right into the middle of that has kyboshed the whole lot.
I do get it but if he had put in those steps, they were never coming out.
A set of steps have to go into place and to come along at this stage
and decide that you want to take it out is quite..
It's..
(TRUCK HORN)
If this is to continue, the project could be delayed
and we could be here for weeks.
Obviously then we'll be the ones to blame for the delays.
Things like this happen all the time on building sites.
That's why architects, engineers, quantity surveyors,
the design team, that's why we don't walk away when the drawings are done.
We're here to solve problems and to make changes and sometimes
these changes happen at the last minute.
But it's fixable. It's not the end of the world.
The solution that we come up with will be fine.
It'll work for everybody and it'll all be forgotten in a month.
Unfortunately today, it is just what everybody's talking about.
It's the one thing that is causing the most frustration.
What are you thinking Avril?
Em..
I'm not feeling it yet.
It's a big living space.
Today she arrived in there and was actually faced with the reality.
This is my house. This is it.
Early in the new year, 6 months into the build a problem that emerged
at the start of this project is about to be resolved.
Patricia has arranged for contractor Liam Darcy to uncover the cause
of the blocked drain and crucially, whose fault it is.
It's about 2 metres down so we take out the ground and hopefully then
we come on the broken saddle.
There's been a lot of frustration.
A lot of frustration.
It's been a long struggle. It's been difficult.
People have got frustrated but it is all starting to slowly come together.
We can finally see the end.
If I won the lotto I'd be gone!
Unless the problem turns out to be the fault of the council,
Avril and Andrew could be facing a remediation bill of up to 5,000.
I think the main is fine. It definitely hasn't moved.
So that's the county council's.
What we think is that there's two sections of your pipe,
there's two connections and two sections.
We thought that maybe the last one of yours moved a little bit.
Up or down? Probably up if anything.
Settlement up? Yeah. It has settled the joint has lifted.
Settlement up. That's a new one for me.
Do you have any idea where we're sitting with cost on this?
There was figures knocked around regards of it.
Provisional figure of about 1,500 to 2,000.
I don't know. I have visions of 5,000, 6,000.
We thought maybe ten grand or something.
It's this massive lump of pipe that has to be replaced.
I think this is a glass half full Avril.
Just a bit.
With the issue of the drain finally in hand, Dermot is keen
to refocus his clients' attention above ground.
The first floor stairs may be missing for now but
at least they've been ordered.
Let's go in and see this.
Have you seen any of this? I haven't.
This is the first time we've been upstairs.
We can now finally see your living space.
It's fantastic progress really.
Walk into it. What do you think?
What are you thinking Avril?
Andrew, for the first time I can see glee all over your face.
Your face is just saying.. You're kind of a bit dubious.
It's not as vast as I imagined.
I'm not feeling it yet.
I don't know why.
It is great and it's just..
It's not as vast as is in my head.
This is much bigger than any sitting room that you would get in a new house.
It's just in relation to the whole space it looks like a small area.
This is quite a wide space, it's quite a long space.
It's got a massive window here looking down the street.
You're going to look back up into a mezzanine space.
Your kitchen is in there.
This space here is just the dining table.
It's a big living space.
Will we go up one more level? Yeah.
This is my favourite space in the whole house.
That is cool looking down, isn't it.
This is now looking down at that space.
This is going to be your balcony. I love that you can see down.
That's a vast feeling when you look down.
It doesn't feel that big when..
I didn't feel it was that big when you're down there.
Today was one of the days where you can actually see the building finished.
I can see it now. You can walk through it and visualise it.
There's a turning point in every project where you're
over the hump of the build and I think we are.
There's loads more to do, don't get me wrong.
But today is one of those moments where you can get a real
sense of how the building is going to feel.
It was great to be able to walk Andrew and Avril through it.
This is the lower level and we still have one more level to go up
out onto our roof terrace. It gets higher.
The view that you're going to get from here is not only looking down
into the increasingly getting vaster space.
You'll also be looking out onto the roof terrace.
Look at that. Oh wow.
That is so cool.
Ah it's great. Isn't it cool.
I think that is just so cool. That one view of the spire.
As we moved further and further up the building, the view and the
reality of what we have all around us, became more apparent.
This is your garden. Look at this view.
Just the tip of Howth there at the Bailey. Oh my word!
That is deadly.
Isn't it cool.
I feel like Mary Poppins.
Wow.
It's brilliant. Fantastic.
Is it getting a bit better? Oh yeah. Wow.
It's weird how as you walk through the building,
it feels like it gets bigger and it gets brighter and lighter.
That's a nice feeling to have in your house.
There's no doubt it's a fantastic lay-out and the space is amazing.
The views we have are better than we expected.
Definitely.
I think I'd buy this house if it was on the market.
A dawn delivery marks the start of an especially significant day on site.
8 months since the build began, custom-made windows are being delivered for installation.
They're vast. They create the vast feeling that I've been going on about.
They're very tall and they're black and they're just great.
I'm so excited.
I think I was jumping up and down when I was inside.
The builders were like, what's yer woman at.
It's a really good day.
There's been lots of issues with banks and details and money.
All kinds of not great stuff so to have the fabulous windows,
it's a really good day.
There it is. Our uber window.
The church looks really good, doesn't it.
(BELL RINGS) There's the bells ringing.
It's amazing.
The final look of this building however, will be defined by
the old and reclaimed as well as the new and shiny.
I've had an idea.
I think we could put this on the ceiling of the hall and the toilet.
The corrugated metal sheeting came from Kilkenny, out of a field.
It's got nice texture and colour.
I was thinking that we could put it on the ceiling,
about that much down from the ceiling on a little
rectangle cut out and hanging down with an LED strip light
so that it would shine on either side of the whole thing.
Dermot will probably go through the roof when he sees it.
Then again he might love it.
That's a bit too rusty but here..
Too much is not coming off.
Pascal's not too enthused but I think..
It could be great. It could be a total disaster.
With a little bit of light I think it could be really nice.
It is wretched looking but in a nice way.
Salvaged.
Anyways. I think we'll try it and see what happens.
Outside on the street, Andrew Rankin is busy re-inventing himself.
Meet Ranksi.
We're having a goat on the outside of the wall.
I was completely against the idea to start with.
I kinda would've liked a cow but cows are a bit overdone.
I like goats.
She found this one which is kind of geometric and we have a geometric
theme in the house and I kinda like this guy.
I thought wouldn't it be nice if we had graffiti but nice graffiti.
Not just a tag but something kind of artistic.
So he's downstairs at the moment painting the goat with lots of masking tape.
We'll see. Hopefully when it's all done she'll be delighted with it.
More than a year since Dermot met his clients for the first time,
the least likely new build in Dun Laoghaire has emerged
from a dilapidated shell on a forgotten corner.
On the ground floor, what was once a cavernous loading bay has been
replaced by the main bathroom and two bedrooms.
But it's on the first floor that the real transformation is apparent.
This bright open plan space, flooded with light from a void
stretching all the way up to the roof,
is where the building really comes into its own.
On a new mezzanine level overlooking the first floor, Avril's craft room
is an airy, ergonomic workspace just a few steps away from the
crowning glory of the most elegant former storage unit in Dun Laoghaire.
I don't think I've ever been as excited as I was when
Andrew and Avril gave me the first tour around this place.
It's these projects that you wait a lifetime for.
Andrew and Avril bought this completely with their heart.
They had this strong vision of how they wanted to live and
where they wanted to live.
They had a dream, I had a dream and
we had to make sure that they were aligned.
I love the double-height space.
I love the feeling in here.
I love it. I love everything that they've brought to it.
I love the quirky little details, I love the furniture.
I love all the bits and pieces that they've made.
It's not what I would choose for myself but there is a strong
theme running through it.
There is a strong integrity, a strong design ethic.
This was never just going to be a house.
This is like a child.
This is something they love, that they've created,
that they know every inch and every intricate detail.
This was the culmination of both their dreams.
Two of them coming at it from very different angles
but it really, really worked.
This was a very inward looking building and I wanted to turn it
and look outwards, turning it upside down, living on the first floor
and capture the street and capture the church spire and the sky
and introduce a garden.
Then by putting the butterfly roof on the top, it opened it up.
The butterfly roof just reached out to the sky,
brought the light in here and right down into the middle of the space.
It surpassed what I thought it would be.
It makes me feel happy to be here.
It's amazing. We can't believe it really.
I walk in and go Janey, we live here.
It's a total dream come true.
You're as proud as punch. I am. Just a little bit.
It looks great. Well done guys.
We got the dance floor.
This is a gym floor.
We started off with the Cricklewood dance floor.
Moved onto a gum.
When you told me about it I thought if it was up to me, I don't think I would have done it.
Now I couldn't imagine the building without it. I love it.
It helps to create that vastness. It does.
Your eye is constantly being drawn up towards the sky,
which is really, really nice.
Everything about the house draws you upwards.
I think it's just a thing of beauty.
I'd fight for it all over again if I needed to.
Love the stairs.
This is critical, the glass.
That gives it the airiness.
It allows it to float and work its way up through the building.
The stairs that was in the original plans, I hated.
It was a very solid thing.
I couldn't see this building with a sold stairs.
But there it is. It does work in the space.
Up to our mezzanine. Crafting space.
This is my favourite spot. I've always loved this bit.
The church spire. You don't see that from the street.
As you slowly work your way up, it just fills this whole window.
Then looking down into this space. Love looking down.
It looks massive. It does.
Does this feel like your space now? Absolutely.
I'm still pinching myself that it's actually real.
Not on a photo somewhere that I want that.
It's there now.
It's almost too good to be true.
So are you happy with the house? Yeah, very happy.
It was worth it.
Everything on this building was kind of a little bit different.
Even from the moment you bought it, you bought an old warehouse
to turn it into a house.
Would've been a lot easier just to buy a house and walk in.
Would you have been happy with that? No, never.
I could never see yourself and Avril just living in an ordinary house.
There's nothing in this house that hasn't kind of got a little
bit of me in and a hell of a lot of them in it.
That's why the project is what it is today.
I actually think it's so Andrew and so Avril. It's fantastic.
We started off contract sum of 260,000.
We've ended up final count of 280,000.
We have roughly 7% - 8% increase, mainly due to Andrew and Avril's
specific client requirements for the house.
They bought it for 90K so the overall spend, we're looking at 370K.
From a solid block industrial cold building into a
warm eco-friendly house. It's fantastic.
It really is amazing what's been done.
This project is a credit to Avril and Andrew
for spotting the potential and how they could take a disused
commercial property and turn it into a beautiful home.
First of all I'd like to commend Andrew and Avril for taking
a huge leap of faith in buying this building in the first place.
I'm sure everybody here thought they were absolutely crazy.
I'm going to take a slice out of the old and
pass over the knife to Andrew and Avril to cut the new.
A new beginning for Andrew and Avril.
Dermot Bannon, to work with as a person,
he is probably the epitomisation of charisma.
I don't think I've ever met anybody as charismatic as Dermot.
There's no way we could've achieved this without Dermot.
No, definitely not.
Frustratingly forgivable.
I don't know if I've ever worked on a project that is filled with
so much passion, heart and soul.
It's been an incredible project to work on.
Frustrating, annoying, arduous but you know something,
it really shows at the end of it.
Every inch of this house just has a story.
It looks like it was built with love and I'm just
so glad to have been a part of it.
So why are we doing this again?
It's probably something that I missed.
It is a bloody mess. It's a complete mess up here.
Why wasn't it noticed before?
It's just an oversight.
We're pretty much pissed off about the whole thing.
If you're in control, it's hard.
But when the control is taken away from you, it's almost impossible.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.