Ireland is absolutely riddled with these little gems of buildings
that are all falling into disrepair.
Adapting a 19th Century building for 21st Century life,
doesn't mean sweeping the past away.
Hopefully people will learn from this that you can actually
pick up a building and transform it into a wonderful family home.
The key is to embrace it.
All you needs a little bravery and a big vision.
It just shows what you can achieve and the results can be stunning.
A few months ago, Jean and Daithi bought themselves a 19th Century
former Church of Ireland schoolhouse at the foot of the Dublin Mountains.
I did like the site. I loved the location.
This is the one.
We can make this place a little bit of heaven.
It'll be worth the work.
The minute I saw it, I just fell in love with it.
It was like a love affair.
Beyond the glorious setting however, behind the impressive facade,
between them and their dream of a new home,
lies a mouldering, dilapidated mess.
I know it's a challenge.
We can't really see a real solution to it as yet.
What are you after getting us into here.
I know. It was kind of, what have you done!
I've sold my house for this.
Undaunted at the prospect of turning this 120 year old derelict
schoolhouse into a modern family home, architect Dermot Bannon
arrives to meet his clients.
We know it's an old house.
We know there's a lot of work involved in it but I think
when it's finished it'll be our dream home.
I think Dermot will do a fabulous job.
Alongside me!
I'm only joking.
Hi Daithi. And you must be Jean. I am. Hi.
And this is the old schoolhouse.
The old coat hangers.
Kids used to file in here. I know.
This was the classroom then.
It's really not what you expect, sure it's not.
There is a bit of rot and some of the floorboards are gone over here.
You're sinking down.
There's dry rot and rising damp. Is there?
Yeah and the floor has caved through in a lot of areas.
Look at all the old shutters.
You've a lot of the old glass.
Do you know is it a protected structure? It is, yeah.
It means we'll have to keep all of the single-glazed windows.
You'll have to refurbish the shutters.
It's amazing, isn't it. Ah it is. Well it will be!
These houses are cantankerous. They can be frustrating.
But they've got soul, they've got character.
It's got history. There's layers and layers there.
It's a wonderful place to live but you have to want to live in a house like this
Initially it was a farmhouse and then it was converted to a schoolhouse in the 30's or 40's.
I think this part just became derelict.
It finished being a school in '86.
Then I think people just lived in the other part of the house.
So someone was living in the house and this stopped functioning as a school. Yeah.
There's living accommodation in behind, is there? Yeah.
The staircase leads up to the bedrooms upstairs.
It's a big, big project.
These buildings are something you buy with your heart,
not with your head. Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you buy it with your heart?
I bought it with my heart. My husband came in somewhere behind.
You were dragged in behind.
I've always enjoyed doing up houses.
The last house we were in, we did a big job on it.
We always just said that we'd like to move but I probably was
the one that pushed it on.
Daithi and Jean bought their last house in 2001.
A happy home that they extended and enjoyed with their three children,
until one day everything changed.
There was an incident with our son who was taken from the road
one evening and left in another housing estate.
When something like that happens to your child..
Thankfully he wasn't harmed or anything like that and
we got him back safely.
I just said to Daithi that I don't want to live here any more.
I just didn't want to.
If that was happening I just said..
That we'd move on. Yeah. Yeah.
This is into the living accommodation then, is it? Yeah.
Oh wow. This is the first you see of the view.
You've got the lovely hill. The sun rises over here.
It's all framed by this lovely window.
It's really nice. It's beautiful.
It's an amazing space.
It's a beautiful old historic house.
The problem is all the view is to the back.
This is lovely, isn't it.
Yeah. It is beautiful.
This is what really sold it for me.
It's just very pretty.
You've got the hill in the background, forest on top of it.
It doesn't get any better than that.
I fell in love with that whole aspect the back.
And the garden. It's a beautiful garden.
The height of the trees. It's just perfect.
It will be, yeah.
It's a big, big project.
Does it intimidate you or daunt you? No.
You have the experience of working with your father on the building sites before.
Your dad is a builder, is he? Yeah.
I grew up on building sites from a young age.
I suppose I have an appreciation of before and after.
It's the in between bit is the hard bit!
These are the kind of houses that architects live in themselves.
The ceiling heights, the width of the rooms.
It's the beautiful windows, the depth of the walls.
I love it. I really do.
I think it's a fantastic house. It's somewhere I'd love to live myself.
What do you want to turn this into? What's the brief?
A comfortable family home.
Restored and then just a modern extension over this side.
A house for life.
What kind of budget have you allowed for it then?
We probably say our very tops would be 360,000.
I think that's a decent enough budget to do something significant here.
But it's a big house and this house could swallow money like you wouldn't believe.
I'll go away and design something, get it costed and we'll see where we go from there.
Okay. Thank you.
That big school room for me, is what the whole house is about.
I think if you're going to to do this house at all,
you've got to incorporate that big room.
It has to be a major element of the design.
But my gut feeling is I don't think Daithi and Jean want to do that.
They have a solution in their head where they want to move everything
out to the side, into a new modern extension.
But then what do you do with the old school room?
I think if you buy a house like this and you want a house like this
and you fall in love with it, you've got to live in it.
You've got to want to live in that space.
It's not what Daithi and Jean want
but I think it's what has to happen.
Well Patricia. Hiya Dermot.
How much have we to save today?
A lot!
How much is a lot? Get out your rubber.
Given the relatively generous budget, Dermot's initial design
is naturally innovative, confident and too expensive.
I finished the costings last night and I'm at 380K. Okay.
We need to get back to 360K. So 20,000 to save.
Yep. I've looked through the schoolhouse in detail and..
We can't take anything off the schoolhouse.
No. We can't change the shape of it and it's a protected structure so we're limited.
That means we have to look at the extension and the glass link.
We're looking at the guts of 10 square metres needs to come off
to take it back to 360K.
I'm covering myself. I would've said 8.4 or 8.5..
So we only have 8.4 then.
No but I'm saying 10 and we're fine. We're covered.
So we could go to 9 then? No. Aim for 10 Dermot.
9. 10 Dermot. 9. 10.
To be sure, to be sure.
We can do it for 9. You said 8.4 so..
Aim for 10 and we're done, we're back on budget.
Okay, we're covered.
And so, having scaled back to a smaller but still perfectly
formed design, Dermot returns with a hopeful pitch for his clients.
We do need to extent this, you do need some extra space
but what I want to try and do is separate it so that it feels like
a very, very different building.
You can have the very, very new and the very, very old.
Then we have to link the two of them so I think if we can try and
tuck a link in at the back so you're linking all these spaces together.
What I've got here is a great opportunity to breathe new life into an old building.
The scale and integrity of the schoolhouse is worth keeping and
I see Jean, Daithi and the kids spending most of their time there.
I'm going to transform the old schoolhouse into an open plan
living and dining area, with a play room for the kids
and a new kitchen, lit and linked together by a new south-facing
corridor at the rear of the building.
Three of the existing first floor bedrooms will be retained,
with the fourth converted to a large family bathroom at the front of the house.
The old schoolhouse will connect to a new extension with a massive
glass atrium link.
This will open out onto another living room beneath a double-height void.
Up on the first floor a small mezzanine will overlook the void
with a large master bedroom to the front of the building.
You've got your double-height space here and your stairs coming up here.
This is a double-height space which will capture the views back up towards the hills.
So from upstairs and downstairs.
I suppose initially it was a shock because it wasn't how
I thought it was going to be.
I don't know. What do you think?
There's a lot to take in.
The master bedroom, I always thought it would overlook the mountain.
That for me was..
I'd like to be looking over the mountains and I've always
wanted a south-facing bedroom.
Rather than have it looking out to the road,
I would prefer it looking over. Looking back. Yeah.
Okay. What I was trying to do was do the double-height space here.
The reason the bedroom is to the front of the house was
to allow a double-height space at the back.
In order to do that, the bedroom had to shunt to the front.
I would want to wake up on an east-facing room
and I was pushing it up kind of under the tree.
I do get what they're saying but I suppose, there's more than one view here.
4 months later revisions to the design have increased the budget to
378,000 euro, with the master bedroom shifted to the rear of the house
and expanded to include a private balcony.
One sunny afternoon in mid-July, work finally begins.
What contractor Simon Chamberlayne and his crew don't know yet
is that they've embarked on what will be the longest build
in the history of Room To Improve.
We've got 16 weeks to turn it round from what it is now
to a family home and I'm looking forward to that.
It's great to see it started.
Yeah, we're looking forward to restoring it.
She's.. I keep calling her she.
She's a beauty.
Ah it's nice to breathe life back into it.
It's a lovely project. It's a beautiful site.
It's so great to get the opportunity to turn it into a home.
It'll make a fantastic home.
19th Century rural architecture was all about simplicity and practicality.
The walls of this building were made to last.
The floors on the other hand, have done well to survive this long.
Built on earth.
Look at that. You could grow spuds in that.
This was literally only that much beneath your floor.
There was nothing.. The floor was resting on this.
It's basically a big mud hut you've bought.
That's very reassuring.
It's great to see it started and finally getting going.
Simon seems confident he'll have it done in the 16 weeks,
which I think is a huge turn around for such a big project.
Will we be able to put a door here? There isn't one at the moment.
Jean has a background in building and that can be a double-edged sword.
It means that she knows enough that if I'm talking to her about something
she gets it, she understands it so phone calls and meetings are a lot quicker.
The opposite side of that is she doesn't really know
that much about conservation. This is a totally different ball game.
That's my priority on this job.
Just 2 weeks into the build, changes already afoot.
Jean wanted to change the link corridor to make it bigger.
We'd already dug foundations so we'd a bit of work to do there, it was a bit annoying.
It's gone out that way about 600mm.
600mm that way. The original footing was here.
When we'd set it out Jean and Daithi came up and they'd seen
the actual width of this glass link and they weren't happy.
They felt it was too small. From the footings.
Well we lined it out with basically string. She wasn't having it.
Once she saw it set out, she wasn't having it.
So we're back to square one. Back to square one.
So we could've just left the drawings as they were originally.
Pretty much.
It works for me because it's now back to how I originally designed it.
But I do know that that was one of the major things.
That was one of our major cost cutting exercises,
taking the corridor and shrinking it.
We tightened it all back up through a big exercise.
Myself and Patricia sat down, we went through everything.
We saved 500 quid here, 500 there.
That alone, by shunting the whole building in,
saved us I think 4,000 euro.
It arrived on site and the whole thing has stretched right back out again.
I'm kind of nervous. Is this a sign of things to come?
So why are we doing this again? We're doing it because..
It's probably something that I missed earlier on.
It is a bloody mess. It's a complete mess up here.
It's just an oversight but it's my oversight.
We're pretty much pissed off about the whole thing.
I need to know now, today.
They design the building and then they come in and look at it
as if somebody else has designed it.
Increased the size of the glass atrium linking their 19th Century
schoolhouse to its new timber framed extension.
Their architect has seized the opportunity to elaborate
the design even further.
The glazed link which goes from the old house to the new house,
Dermot was out last week and he didn't really like the look
of some of the steel and so he's changed around the drawings.
Will you explain what you've done?
You've changed something because you don't like it.
At the moment we had I sections which looked like an I
coming down within the walls to support the roof over the atrium.
It meant we were bringing in a little nib.
We had a little wall. Is it on the drawings?
What I was pushing for was that this glass will go from the
extension to the new house so that they're touching.
When the steel drawings arrived, the easiest thing to do was to
bury them in a wall. That doesn't work for me.
What I want is a clear break between the old and the new
and that to be linked with glass.
We're totally pissed off about this because we had all the
original steel ordered and it's on a floor in a warehouse, paid for.
Good news you want?
There's an extra cost towards the price of that steel.
So that's not good news, is it?
We don't need to talk about that now. The party pooper.
The steel is heavier basically. What are you looking at?
On those lengths it could be 30% per length.
So why are we doing this again?
To lose the nibs.
And to lose the nibs it's going to cost us more money? Yeah.
Yes.
Why? Why deviate off what you've already signed off on?
It's probably something that I missed earlier on.
That's my fault. It should've happened but I think it has to happen.
I want the old, I want the new and I want a really lightweight
glass link between the two.
I don't want to see two little walls coming out of it.
You're coming to us to say it's going to cost 30% more because
I think it's going to look better but..
We didn't know what the original was going to look like.
I'm not coming to you with this, by the way.
I'm coming to you. I'm coming with this.
What's your thoughts on it?
I trust you, you know.
We can't take 5 weeks to decide on this.
No, no. I need to know now. Today I would say.
Later that day there's another unwelcome development on site.
Outside the crew have been laying foundations for the two-storey extension.
On the surface everything's proceeding to plan.
Below ground, it's a different story.
It's sort of an unforeseen f*** up basically.
Initially you had two bathrooms here at the back of the house and
they fed into a man hole here.
They were surface mounted.
Our pipes will not be surface mounted, therefore they'll be
below the floor which is about 450mm.
Therefore they won't make the fall from there to here.
The two options are a sump pump basically on site which will
deal with that, it will pump it back up into the main line,
or a new connection onto the main road.
I wouldn't want that pump. I've seen them before.
I don't want that in the house.
We'd need to go forward with the drain to the front.
The main connection onto the main sewer out on the main road
may be somewhere between 5K to 10K, depending on who does it.
You've all sorts of implications there with closing down the road,
road opening licences, bonds for the council.
That could escalate up beyond 10K.
We weren't expecting to come up here today and be told about
the drains and the steel so it's a bit..
A bit much to take on but I suppose you have to prepare for the worst
and hope for the best.
We do have a contingency of sorts, which is now gone!
But as the weeks passed, delays began to mount up.
Before the new steel could be manufactured, the design had to
be sent out to tender.
There were estimates to compare and a new contract to award.
In the end, Simon was left with no option but to close the site.
We pulled off site 2 weeks ago and locked the gate because
we'd actually nothing to do here.
We basically sent everyone packing.
I can't give them any program as to when they'll be back until
we know our dates, as to when we're going to have materials on site.
It is a bloody mess. It's a complete mess up here.
They designed the building 6 months ago.
Then when we start putting it together they come in and look at it
as if somebody else has designed it.
We're pretty much pissed off about the whole thing
because we had 16 weeks here.
It's not realistic for us to finish that in 16 weeks
because we're at a stand still.
People are pissed off standing around, not knowing what they're doing.
They're changing their minds. They won't make decisions.
It's this week, it's next week. It doesn't work like that.
Also it costs you money. That's why we shut the site.
There was no ifs or buts.
We just put the padlock on the gate and left.
Finally much to Simon's relief, the newly fabricated steel for
the glass link arrives on site.
It's a really busy, really noisy day onsite but that's brilliant
because it's been dead here for 4 weeks.
The steel frame is finally going in.
4 weeks later.
I feel why wasn't it noticed before the steel was due to go up.
It should've been flagged that either he didn't like the look of it
or it wasn't good enough to go in and it wasn't flagged.
Because of that we had to go back to the drawing board and that's what delayed it.
I know it's upsetting, it's frustrating, everybody's annoyed
but it'll be worth it in the end.
They're going to be in this house for a long time. 4 weeks is not a huge amount of time.
I know it's a month's rent, I know it's delays.
I do understand all that but the house has to look right.
We have to move on from this.
At the end of the day, he's done it because aesthetically it will look better.
The new steel isn't the only upgrade nor the most costly.
Daithi and Jean have also decided to replace the boiler specified in the
original budget with a state of the art renewable heating system.
We're drilling here today for a geothermal system.
We're going down 120 metres.
Take the heat out of the ground.
The granite rock around this area is very good for heat.
It's like a furnace down there.
It creates heat inside for underfloor heating and radiators
if you want and your domestic water for your shower, bath, whatever you want.
It'll heat all that water and you'll have more than you'll ever need.
It's kind of pushed us to the limit because initially we had said that
our max was 360K so we have gone over that, a good bit.
My last check financially, bottom line on the overall spend to date,
I'm looking at a figure of 400K.
So we're up 25,000 at this moment in time.
There's 15K for the road connection into the foul line, which is a client option.
There's 5K extra for the steel frame for the atrium link.
We've gone from a traditional boiler to a geothermal underground
bore hole system throughout the house, so that's gone up 5K.
The pressure is on me now to see is there anywhere else in the
building we can make savings.
There's a few little areas.
We're looking at the heads. We mightn't have to replace all of them.
It's little bits of money here and there.
We're not going to save 25K. There's not a hope.
Savings, to be honest with you at this stage, not going to happen.
Dermot can't do much about the spiralling budget but he can
give his clients a tastes of the rewards that lie ahead.
Today he'll take them to see a house in Rathmines whose
grand Victorian scale has been adapted to modern life,
by architects Lawrence and Long.
This is a house from 150 years ago and it has been completely
reinvented for modern living.
It feels like a new, contemporary home but it retains
all of the original features and you know exactly when it's from.
There's so many buildings like that around the country that have got huge potential.
Daithi and Jean have bought one and bringing them here today shows them the end result.
These are two of the original great rooms of the house.
There's just something really amazing about these old period houses.
It's the ceiling heights, the cornicing, the windows,
the shutters, the coving.
There's nothing butchered, there's nothing ripped apart.
These are in their absolute original state and I think they're stunning.
This is the primary reason I wanted to bring you.
The kitchen. Oh wow.
Oh God, that's amazing.
Most people when they're extending an old period house
or something like you have, they tend to take all the modern
facilities and build a big extension out at the back,
throw the kitchen into it and then you end up with these huge
big amazing rooms, completely unused.
What's the point in owning a house like this,
what's the point in living in a house like this unless you use these rooms?
They've kept all the original features.
They've kept the shutters, they've kept the old windows.
You've got that in abundance.
You've got the three big windows right at the front of the house.
The same size as those.
There's no reason why the big old schoolhouse can't feel as special as this.
When you take on a listed building you know there's going to be extra
costs but when you come in and see this, it'll be worth it.
You can see the finished article and you know it will be fantastic.
This house here is absolutely magnificent.
You can see by having a cold colour on the wall, how the green really
pops out and you can really see it over here.
It is nice to see a finished product when you're in the middle of mass destruction.
We have a schoolhouse. It's not the same as this but
it just shows, with a bit of effort, with a bit of vision and foresight,
what you can achieve and the results can be stunning.
A week later, the biggest construction day of the build is under way.
By evening a truckload of prefabricated walls, floors and
roof panels will be assembled and the shell of the new extension will be complete.
We have an 80 tonne crane which is parked in the site, very tight.
The lorry with the kit on it is parked out on the road.
It's on a very busy road. The main Dublin-Eniskerry road.
It's constant traffic so we've got issues with traffic management.
Basically they have to crane it around from the road
280 degrees, over the telephone wires and get it in over the
existing house and down onto the site.
It's quite tricky, quite slow, quite precarious.
I thought it peeled back a bit more.
The first thing was that the view was no longer there.
The view was gone because the timber frame had gone up.
We won't really know until the second level goes up.
This is your balcony. The view is stunning up here.
It's spectacular.
When you're in your bedroom you've got this view the whole way to that.
Then a balcony so it's different views from different areas.
From this aspect it looks a lot bigger.
This is all glass so this whole wall opens out onto this garden.
Upstairs is amazing.
It's worth all the sleepless nights.
Well your sleepless nights anyway!
I've had a few sleepless nights over the budget and the costs
are escalating all the time.
Going out onto the road with the drainage is a big cost.
It's working out at about 12K.
It'll be worth it. Overall I'm delighted.
If you're in control, it's hard.
When the control is taken away from you, it's almost impossible.
It's a pain in the arse because you can't programme anything.
She wanted to be in the middle of all of this mess.
But in doing that, she created more mess.
With long delays, major changes to the design,
a soaring budget and a 4 week construction shutdown,
the project has been extremely stressful for everyone involved,
not least the builder.
We've had all the delays.
Basically we've been delayed for 4 weeks, which we're not very happy about
but we're going to move on from that at this stage.
I'm going to have to get really firm with everybody here
just to get this thing done.
We're going to re-do our programme.
No more faffing about, making up decisions, going away for a week, coming back.
We've put up with a lot of that so far and we really can't
afford to put up with it any longer.
For the last 5 months, Daithi, Jean and their three kids have been
living in rented accommodation in Leopardstown.
It seems they'll be here for some time to come.
Even when we started late in July, I was very sceptical of us getting in before Christmas.
I just thought it's an old house.
There is going to be problems along the way. There always is.
Design issues or something not fitting in right
or something taking longer than expected. You do expect it.
It is disappointing not to be in before Christmas but
you kind of accept it and you just have to be patient and make sure it's done right.
If you start rushing it and start cutting corners,
you're going to pay for them 6 months down the line when things start going wrong.
You want it done correctly.
We can see what it's going to be at the end.
It's really taking shape now and you can see it's going to
be a fantastic home when it's finished.
It'll be worth the sacrifice.
In the last 4 months the cedar-clad extension has been finished
but work on the interior has been frustrated by one delay after another.
Halfway through the project Jean and Daithi decided to
take out 6 or 8 contractors out of the package.
So the plumbing, the electrics, the windows, various things.
That's had an impact on us because they're not really listening to me.
They're dealing with Jean directly which is fine but that leaves me
outside of the whole thing.
It's a pain in the arse cos you can't programme anything and
it's going on and on and on. That's very frustrating.
I'm sure that I probably contributed to things being delayed.
In hindsight, it probably would've been better if
the whole package had been left to Simon.
But I did want to have some sort of an input into it
and have my own stamp as well.
It's not that Jean didn't trust anybody around.
I just think she really wanted to do it.
This is her house. She bought it as a project.
She bought it with her heart.
She said I love this house, I love this project.
But she also wanted to do it herself but kind of didn't tell anybody.
So I haven't had full control of this project but I don't think
I was ever meant to and it took a while for that penny to drop with me.
If you're in control it's hard but when the control is
taken away from you, it's almost impossible.
It hasn't been easy.
We would do this sort of thing in our sleep if it had been
organised properly from the beginning.
It just went so badly wrong throughout.
Overseen by Jean, who agonised for months over its design,
a beautifully crafted bespoke staircase is being installed
by contractor, Brendan Buggy.
It looks fantastic.
For me, the whole essence of this stairs is to make it feel as
lightweight as possible because this is where all our light is
and it's where the view is.
But it was a bit of a journey to get it to look so simple.
The biggest problem we had was the junction here at the bottom.
Because there's no support leg underneath which you would normally
have on a stairs like this, there's a lot of force and stress
all on this corner and this corner.
You would've liked a leg on the other side.
Or somewhere in the landing to support it.
Jean didn't want any support legs underneath.
She wanted to keep the whole thing open and clean.
There's more drawings went into this stairs than..
It was difficult to get it to work.
It delayed the project but seeing it here today,
I think it was worth it.
I think it's something we won't regret.
Today has been a real turning point in the project.
Normally this turning point happens a little bit earlier
but the nature of this project was so stop/start that
you never felt there was an end day in sight.
Today when you start seeing precious finishes,
when you see all that going in, you know we are finishing this project
and we're finishing it soon and it feels great.
The simple practical layout of the schoolhouse was always short on period features.
The old sash windows and shutters however, were intact and
have since been returned to their original 19th Century condition.
When you think about windows from the 1980's or 1970's
and they're all rotten.
This is 140 years old and still workable, still smooth, still strong.
Just a bit of TLC.
In 90% of our time in properties like this, the old window can be re-used.
Most country towns still have it, most country houses still have it.
It's very important to keep it.
This project is a conservation project. It's a protected structure.
This was an old schoolhouse. It was a really simple design.
There was no elaborate skirtings, no elaborate coving.
There wasn't any of the stuff that you would normally associate
with a house that's 150 years old,
because it was a very simple building.
But what wasn't simple was the windows and the treatment around the windows.
All the ornate architraves.
They were the key thing that we had to preserve because
they are the link that this is what separates the schoolhouse
from the contemporary building beside it.
That had to be got right.
Along with the preservation of the old, the installation of the new is under way.
Today contractor Andy Spillane is hard at work on the new kitchen.
Looks really well. Fantastic storage in there.
This is all just standard off the shelf stuff.
I'm sick of telling people that you don't have to spend a fortune
on a kitchen to get a really good look. No, absolutely not.
It's just being clever with how you lay things out.
When you're going around this house, everything about it is really cool,
understated but still really classy.
That was our challenge, to stand up against that.
For the first time, I can safely say we're out of here in a week.
Up until now it's been, it could be another month,
could be another 2 months.
There were so many unanswered questions and so many delays.
Now it's next week.
The family are going to be in their home next week.
I never thought we'd see that day and it just all came together.
It's brilliant.
Will you forget the pain? Yeah. I will.
Move on.
Stiff drink.
I will forget the pain. Gone. Blank it out.
With the completion of Daithi and Jean's new home now in sight,
it seems fitting that the two people who fretted most over it,
should now share in its enhancement.
Do you want to show me what you like? Yeah.
Let's start with that.
Is there anything that jumps out at you?
If you had five seconds.. I like that grey one.
Down again. So five seconds again. Just pick them out.
Whatever jumps out at you.
Not that one, the one beside it.
It's one of these things that people think architects aren't that bothered about,
coming to look at curtains and fabrics but actually,
on big corporate jobs, if you're designing a hospital or hotel,
you would be involved in absolutely everything.
I think that curtains in this house will be hugely important because they're so big.
This is a really neutral colour and this could work anywhere but
I think in your house, something like a grey could work really well.
Do you like that? Yeah, I do.
I do like it.
Remember the house we went to see. Yeah.
Remember they had the really strong grey colours.
All that popped when you stood in that room and looked out the window,
all that you saw was the green.
This was on a street but you saw the trees, the foliage because it was so grey.
If you had painted it a warmer colour, the green wouldn't have felt as warm.
It was really good to get a help with that because I was undecided.
I'm good at design, I know what I like and all that but
I would've maybe never have gone for that colour.
It's nice to be pushed outside your boundaries sometimes.
It hasn't been a battle because I think our tastes are quite similar.
I think that has helped immensely.
In terms of today, it was easy. It was enjoyable.
It was like going shopping. The way it should be.
Jean has an incredible energy.
We've done curtains, couches, dining tables.
We've done upstairs, downstairs. I'm worn out.
I'd say Jean could probably keep going for the next week.
When it comes to bathroom fittings, Jean has a very clear idea
of the impression she wants to give.
Is this upstairs or downstairs bathroom? Upstairs. Double.
Can we go for something this size downstairs? No.
Why? It looks like.. No.
It looks like a toilet underneath your stairs.
It is your under the stairs toilet.
It is your downstairs typically under the stairs toilet.
No. I don't like it. Why?
That looks like a jail sink. No it doesn't!
Yes it does. It's really just there to wash your hands.
The biggest surprise was I would've thought Jean would want a really
luxurious bathroom for herself but it's not.
She's spending it on the guest toilet downstairs.
These are probably the most expensive type of bathroom.
You definitely want to put this downstairs? Yeah.
So the downstairs is posher than the upstairs.
Well it's the one that's on show.
You're not going to have anybody in your own bathroom.
Nobody's going to go up to your en-suite and use the facilities.
They'll all use the facilities downstairs so give the guests good facilities.
Then they'll imagine that it's amazing upstairs.
More than 12 months after work began on site, the old schoolhouse
at Kilternan has undergone a breath-taking transformation.
Distinct from the original building, the new extension enhances the
facade without compromising the existing architecture,
adding a series of new aspects, including the glorious view
from the balcony of Daithi and Jean's luxurious master bedroom.
Light floods into the huge glass atrium at the rear of the house,
illuminating the entire ground floor from the extended kitchen to the main living area.
A glorious open plan space that retains the grand scale of
the school room that used to be.
Hi guys. Hi Dermot.
It's good to see it finished.
The house is looking amazing. It looks stunning.
It's surpassed all of my dreams that I could ever have hoped for.
I love getting up in the morning and coming home at night.
It's amazing. It's an amazing house.
We're delighted the way it turned out. We really are.
I'm dying to see the inside.
I just can't believe I live here. I can't.
It is a piece of heaven. It really is.
It just feels like home.
It's very simple.
I love the restraint of it all.
I suppose we had set ideas.
I don't think we were giving the old house the respect
that it deserved to be rejuvenated and to be utilised.
We were kind of saying we'll get a new extension.
But he breathed fresh air back into this area and just
opened it up again and brought it back to life.
It would've been the easy option to design everything over there
and then what would you do with this space? You'd never use it.
I fell in love with he house when I walked into it the first time.
That made me nervous because when you fall in love with something
you don't want to break it, you don't want to destroy it.
It had to work, otherwise I was in big trouble.
But sure I got in big trouble anyway!
I really like Dermot, I have to say.
He's a great guy and he's a great architect.
He just needs a PA.
Will we go out and have a look at the atrium? Yeah.
Broke everybody's heart, didn't it.
This was the big intervention.
This had to do so much work because this is the link
that linked the old and the new.
It's also the main source of light, to bring light into the old schoolhouse.
That was probably one of the most difficult things to resolve.
Design-wise, financially, time-wise, programme-wise, structurally.
Was it worth it? Absolutely yeah.
Every single sleepless night, worry, torment, was worth it.
I had those too. Trust me.
He is a fabulous architect and he's a great guy.
Even when I got really grumpy with him, he was always very dignified.
Whereas the other room was all about the space
and the height of the ceilings, this is all about that corner view,
looking back up into the hill.
This is a great room. Yeah, it's a lovely room.
His design was magnificent. It really was.
It think there's very few other architects that would've cone up with such a good design.
The only thing that we really changed was the bedroom.
He had the bedroom to the front and I wanted it to the back.
That's the only thing that we changed.
The balcony was a great idea.
An indulgence when you've got a tight budget to do a big project
but God is it worth it. It really is.
This is a really special part of the house.
The view from the balcony is magnificent.
You can sit there in the evening before you doze off or read a book.
I come up most evenings and the curtains are wide open and
Daithi's asleep in the bed, looking at the stars.
Ah Jean, I don't think I've ever seen so many shoes in my life.
Right from the start Jean wanted a big walk-in wardrobe.
I love it. Not only is it a walk-in wardrobe and it's really functional
but the fact that we've put the big window into it and the window seat.
It's a bright space but it's also got a great view out
up into the canopy of the tree that we kept at the front of the house.
I know that this window is probably a waste of space in the middle
of a wardrobe but it's another view.
I never saw it like that. I thought it was beautiful.
Even though I still would like more space..
If this whole wall was full of wardrobes you'd never have enough space.
I've learned that about women and walk-in wardrobes.
They can never be big enough.
You couldn't ignore that you had this.
We're right up into the canopy now, up into the trees.
This is the biggest pane of glass in the whole house.
And it's in the wardrobe.
It's beautiful.
The fundamental challenge here was to take the old schoolhouse and use it.
To get light into that space and to get views from it
while connecting it back to a new extension.
The easiest thing here would've been to add a big extension
to the side, go live in that and forget the schoolhouse existed.
But as soon as I walked through the door, I fell in love with the place.
I loved the house in its ramshackle state.
I loved the house with its broken floorboards.
I loved it in the state that it was.
It's a really solid, chunky building that owns the site and I didn't
want to detract from that.
Whatever you put beside the house needed almost to be as strong as it
so I took the form of this house and I turned it through 90 degrees.
It's a really simple form.
I didn't want the extension to apologise for what it was.
It needed to be a strong form, almost as strong as the existing house
but radically different.
The timber will go a natural silvery-grey colour over time
and then start to blend in with the woodland so you
very much read the old and new.
That was crucially important to me here, that one didn't destroy the other.
I definitely think every penny was spent well.
There was no money wasted and I think we got very good value for money.
With everything in, you're looking at 450,000.
I think any of money we did spend on it is well invested.
We put in the geothermal heating system.
I think our first bill was 200 euro.
Light and heat and gas for the whole house.
That'll pay for itself within 7 or 8 years.
This house is forever and ever.
I hope so!
This is.. It's my dream house.
I wouldn't ever want to live anywhere else.
It's surpassed my wildest dreams and I know I can be hard work at the best of times.
It's everything and more.
Delighted to be here and that it's actually finished.
Because it did go on for quite a while.
Particularly when you walk in and see all the kids running around.
They're using it now as a family home.
It wasn't looking good during the project but we got there with it.
The kids have really adjusted well up here.
They really, really, like it. They love the house.
They love the playroom.
That's probably one of the nicest rooms in the house.
It's a lovely room. It's quite colourful.
The kids love it and it's close to the kitchen
so it works well for them that they have their own space to play
and I'm close to them if it kicks off or anything.
Well guys, long road. We're at the end of it.
Congratulations everyone.
Cheers.
ALL: CHEERS!
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
It's a lovely transformation from an old schoolhouse.
What I love about it is the whole subtlety of the way it's done.
It hasn't destroyed the character. I think it's a fantastic job.
The walk-in wardrobe was just amazing, wasn't it.
Every girl's dream.
It was like a whole room. Bigger than my bedroom.
We both said when we saw the bedroom, we hated out houses.
Jean and Daithi bought this old dilapidated schoolhouse
with a preservation order on it, but in the must stunning of locations.
I didn't want to ruin the soul and character of the old schoolhouse.
I wanted to capture the amazing surroundings but they had the
foresight to buy this place.
It was my job to turn it from a schoolhouse into what
I hope is going to be a great family home.
It's one of the most frustrating things as an architect when you
get somewhere like this and you just put something so bland onto it.
It really frustrates me almost to the point of anger that this can happen.
The house isn't inviting. We're literally living in two rooms.
The wall to the front of the house. It's not in the contract.
I'm not giving up on that yet.
We've seen his true colours today.
I know you're not okay but sometimes we have to agree to disagree.
I can't get rid of this. There's no way I'm getting rid of this.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.