We've lived in Donegal and Mayo and Wexford and Wales,
Enniskillen, Galway.
Every family needs a place to call home but with the
needs of three generations to consider, that's a tall order.
There's 7 people in this family, ranging from 6 to 95.
But when the home to end all homes is a gloomy 1950's bungalow in Nenagh,
you need all the help and harmony the 21st Century can offer.
My job is to match the energies of the building to the occupants.
I honestly don't know how to react to this.
I saw Dermot was pooh-poohing the Feng Shui.
A bit of me thinks what are they doing here.
I'm wondering do I like this at all.
Since Dr. Pat Harrold returned to Nenagh in 2005,
he and his physiotherapist wife Marita, have been looking
for a permanent family home.
My dad died about 20 years ago.
My mother's been here on her own since.
She's done a great job on her own but she's in her mid-90's.
She doesn't like me telling people that but she is.
We'd like to move back in.
It would be better for everybody concerned I think,
if we could keep an eye on Mary under the same roof.
She's been on her own for long enough and I think she deserves that luxury.
It's okay dear.
She's a very private woman so I think it'd be important
that she does have her own space.
That we're not always going to come and take over her space.
There'll be 7 people living here and they'll be ages from 95 to 6.
So that's a lot of different needs and necessities and things to work out.
I don't know how he's going to do it.
And for now, neither does their architect.
I do feel for family life we'd need to modernise it.
Pat, how are you? Nice to meet you.
You must be Marita. Lovely to meet you.
Lovely little house. Yeah, we think so.
I just want to bring a smile back to this property and
put a smile on its face again.
This was the dining room.
When I grew up here, we used to eat here.
Then my dad took a fagary to build an extension down here.
Did he build the original house?
The whole house is self build really.
He built it with my Uncle Jonjo. The two of them built it.
They never built a house before or since.
This is the place of my earliest memories.
There was two of us, two little boys.
It was like living in a country cottage.
There was trees and fields and farms all around us.
To me that was just heaven.
This garden is fantastic.
It is. I love this garden.
I want to completely rejuvenate it.
I want to see flowers and I want to see beehives and I want to see..
A very natural kind of..? Absolutely. Completely organic.
So almost like a woodland?
Yeah, I want to leave the trees and plant loads more.
So let's go and have a look at some of the other rooms.
This is a great room but it's freezing.
It's very, very cold.
We definitely would have to sort out the insulation.
I couldn't bear it to be living in it as cold as this.
Oh my goodness. Look at the old fireplace.
It's written all over your face that this isn't your idea
of the perfect kitchen. Absolutely not.
Would you aspire to something a little bigger?
I certainly would.
A lot bigger!
So this isn't the dream kitchen for you. No.
Will we go out and have a look here?
What is this room?
Granny would use this. That's her chair there.
She'd come in in the summertime and sit there.
I can imagine it's nice to sit there.
These windows are just cutting off your view.
You really want to just look up and see the canopy of the trees.
Is that a washing machine? This is the museum quarter!
You do guided tours here.
There's Lux flakes. They were 36p.
The house has been frozen in time.
Nothing's really been changed in the last 20 years.
What have we got in here?
Bedrooms and then the other side, is it?
And a small sitting room.
So how many bedrooms are in the house? Three.
This is an extension.
Do you know what it is, this window throws so much light in here
that if the conservatory hadn't been added on, this is what
all the rest of the rooms would feel like.
The house itself is a cute little house but it's small.
The rooms are small, it's cold, it's dark.
It's a house of its time but it's not of this time.
The idea behind this is you need to move back in with Mum and
make this your family home.
So what does that entail? What do you need?
We need a rake of bedrooms. How many bedrooms do you need?
Six bedrooms.
We've two girls, completely different personalities.
One tidy, one messy.
We've a 12 year old boy and a 6 year old girl.
And then a room for yourselves and a room for your mum.
So 6 bedrooms in total. And bathroom.
How many bathrooms do you need?
We're thinking of just having one family bathroom and then
Mary will have her bathroom as well.
Will you be okay with one family bathroom between six of you? Yeah.
We'd rather bedrooms than lots of bathrooms.
I want Feng Shui. I don't want too many bathrooms.
They give bad energy into the other areas of the house.
It's not a very Irish thing at the moment.
It's all about en-suites. I think it's a better use of space.
Okay. So what kind of living accommodation do you need?
I want a big open plan kitchen/dining room.
For Pat, he would like a study. I want a library really.
I've thousands of books. I need a place to put them.
Why are you laughing?
How many thousands of books?
Well, maybe 4,000 or 5,000.
And they all need to be accommodated back in here as well? Absolutely.
We're adding on a bit onto this house.
It's a big project.
This is a small 3-bedroom house and we're turning it into a
big 6-bedroomed family house.
How much have you allowed for that? 250,000.
And that is it. Bottom line.
That is a significant amount of money but my big worry
is how much the existing house is going to swallow up.
Practically everything has to be redone in this house.
Then what have you got left over for the new build to increase the size of this.
Let me go away, have a look at it and see what I can come back with.
I think it probably would be easier to demolish it and build a new house
but the house does have a certain charm and it's the house that he grew up in.
If we can save it at all, I think it's worth doing.
Not your average GP, prescriptions aren't the only thing Dr. Pat
writes in the course of a working day.
From an early age, his love of books has evolved into a fully
fledged career as an author.
I just love books. I love the smell of them, the feel of them.
It seemed like a natural thing to write, to express your creative self.
I started writing for The Irish Times and The Irish Medical News.
I write poetry, fiction, journalism.
I'm nearly finished a children's novel as well.
This project is a huge thing for all our lives and I have to write about this.
I'll keep a diary of things as they go along.
I think Dermot's great material actually. Bertie Wooster.
I think there's a touch of Bertie about him.
Bertie Wooster is a tall, thin, very nice person who gets into
terrible trouble and fixes and scrapes and tries to keep everybody happy.
I do think Patricia has a touch of Jeeves about her.
Jeeves is a really calm, intelligent person who goes around undoing
the damage Bertie did and trying to keep everyone from killing Bertie.
Hiya. Calculator out already!
I haven't used it yet though.
2 weeks later, Bertie Wooster has come up with an initial design
about which Jeeves, rather surprisingly, has only one concern.
Teeny bit worried about the contingency sum, 4,000.
Particularly because Pat has told me that his father and uncle built it.
They'd never built a house before they built this house.
So I'm a teeny bit worried that we're a bit tight there
and there's no fat if something comes up.
We don't know what way it was built. No.
We just don't know what we're going to open up and discover
in the existing house and we're not going to know until we start
on site and open it up. Okay.
Fingers crossed. Yeah.
A week later, Dermot returns to Nenagh with high hopes and a plan
that's ambitious but for now, on budget.
These are the concepts.
First of all, because of the budget we're going to have to keep as much
of the existing house as possible.
So to demolish all of these bits and bring it back to the existing.
Secondly is to divide it into two specific zones.
So these become the sleeping quarters.
Then we get all of our living out the back to where it's opening
out onto this amazing vista.
To give The Harrolds the space they need, I'm going to add
a guest WC and three more bedrooms to the existing house.
The first of these bedrooms will replace the old living room
and at the side next to the family bathroom, there'll be an extension with a new master bedroom.
At the rear of the house, I'm going to remove the kitchen
to enlarge two existing bedrooms.
On the far side of a new hall, a former sitting room will become
a generous en-suite bedroom for Pat's mother, Mary.
With the 1970's extension demolished, I'll create a new spur at the rear
of the house laid out in three distinct blocks.
The first will have a new hall, the guest WC and a storage space.
The second will be an open plan kitchen/dining area
with plenty of shelving for Pat's book collection.
Finally, a third block will be a spacious living room from
where a timber boardwalk will extend out into the garden woodland.
So we've got 6 bedrooms, the existing bathroom and then an
en-suite off this bedroom for your mum.
This is the link that divides the whole lot.
Bedrooms here, a link divide between the two,
kitchen/dining here and then opening into this lovely big living room.
This is great because it's facing due south and it's opening out onto the garden.
Then the boardwalk will extend out from this building.
I see this as extending out as far as we can afford it,
out into the landscape. That is gorgeous.
Absolutely gorgeous.
I'm very impressed with this design.
It's got the bits I like. The house that I love is being preserved
almost in its totality and being improved on and it's got the bit you like.
The new flashy, modern, Dermot Bannon bit.
I love the overall design. I'm really happy with it.
I love the open plan.
I love this bit here. Yeah, that is just lovely.
That is just lovely.
It's nearly there but the problem is the bedrooms are small.
There's no doubt about it.
Especially our bedroom.
I know that our own bedroom furniture won't fit into that bedroom.
The bedroom is the crunch? Yeah.
Even though 250,000 is a lot of money, you're creating a big 6 bedroomed house.
Just not 6 big bedrooms. No.
I really wanted to give them everything on their wish list because
they're doing such a wonderful thing. Moving in with granny.
Three generations here. But I just couldn't.
What I really did try and do was to keep the shell of the
existing house, put all the bedrooms in there and have spent the money
on the living spaces.
What do you think of it? I'm sure it's grand.
You're sure it's grand!
Is that a good reaction?
When you're doing it, I really have confidence in you.
I think Granny will like this.
It'll be a hell of a lot warmer and it'll be a hell of a lot safer.
And a bit more company so that's good.
After some adjustment to the original design and an increase in the
size of the master bedroom, Mary moves out to join Pat, Marita and
the kids at rented accommodation nearby.
The build will be handled by a family firm of 3 brothers.
Ray, Bernard and Padraig Hackett.
We all think we're the boss. That's why it works.
Everyone is the boss at a certain stage.
Early on it's generally myself and Padraig.
We do all the ground work.
Then Bernard comes in and looks after all the roofing
and we take it from there.
This build will involve the complete remodelling of an existing house
and the construction of an extensive new wing.
The schedule is aspirational to say the least.
18 weeks.
We'd want every day of the 18 weeks to have it work right.
Today is going to be mainly about demolition.
Please God it all goes to plan and there's no issues with the demolition.
But this is no ordinary 1950's bungalow.
Pat's childhood home was built to last.
These walls would put an air raid shelter to shame.
How are ye lads? Dermot, pleased to meet you.
Padraig how are you.
Bernard.
You're ripping down the big old structure.
It's a bit slower than what we thought.
You've taken out everything and there's not even a crack in it.
The fact that it hasn't budged, it's amazing.
I actually can't get over it. It's causing us a headache, to be honest.
Will it move? I'm hoping. It better move!
It was rock solid.
This is not a typical 1970's extension that was added onto a house.
This had poured concrete.
It was more like an office block than an extension onto the back of the house.
After 9 hours of heavy demolition, Dermot's clients have come to see what's left.
What a mess.
That's amazing, isn't it.
I suppose they know what they're doing.
That let in a bit of light, didn't it.
That'll take me a while to get used to.
Well it's harrowing to see your house ripped apart.
I actually remember a lot of that stuff going up.
It was amazing to see that they had done so much so quickly.
It looks so much smaller, doesn't it.
I see it like an operation.
It has to be done to make it better.
So it's onwards and upwards. No turning back now.
Absolutely not.
We were talking to the builders earlier on and he reckons that
the concrete was all probably mixed here.
Yeah, I remember cement mixers and shovels.
Just shovels moving away with it.
And bringing it up. Yeah.
Within hours, there's a change to the original design.
Pat and Marita now want a home gym incorporated into their bedroom.
Dermot suspect's they haven't quite thought it through.
We're putting a gym room on here? Yeah.
We're using part of this bedroom as a gym room.
And just a wee window there. How much space do we need?
What kind of gym equipment are we talking about?
Treadmill, rower, bicycle.
That's a lot of equipment.
If you were to go into a gym and put a treadmill, a rower and
a bicycle right beside each other, it would eat up a lot of a small bedroom.
But that's a huge bedroom.
It is but I think that as a bedroom, it's a big bedroom.
But a treadmill is massive. It's the size of a single bed.
Are we better off now before we dig out the foundations,
to push this out a small bit?
If we're going to do it, let's do it properly.
Let's measure them out, see how much space we need,
have them on a drawing and then we decide.
Okay, we can do that.
We are 3 weeks delayed but we could be we could be 4 or 5 weeks delayed on this.
It's a big problem.
God loves a trier. You never give up.
All the giving out in the world, it makes no difference.
I just want it to be done, built, finished.
2 weeks into the build at Pat and Marita's bungalow in Nenagh,
demolition is complete and the foundations of
two new extensions are being laid.
Including the footprint of a home gym for which
Dermot still hasn't received the full brief.
The builders are ploughing ahead with a plan that there's no drawings for.
Because I've had no dimensions and it hasn't been agreed in price.
That frightens me a little bit that there's things happening
on site with nobody giving an instruction.
Quantity surveyor Patricia Power has been working up costings
for this late addition to the design, unaware that the foundations are already in place.
Why I went ahead and put the foundation there was
it was either going to come out that far or it was going to be left here where it is.
If it goes back in and they don't want the bigger space,
I'll take that on the chin and I'll put in this foundation.
This is the edge of the building here.
If I stand here, that's the amount of extra space that we have.
I just want everybody to understand that I don't physically think that
a treadmill, a rowing machine and a cycling machine are going to fit.
No. No.
When I see the room now and that's the extended room,
I know what you meant. But you couldn't squeeze them in?
Have we ploughed ahead a bit too early with this?
A pure simple thing.
If you're building a gym you would want to make sure that the gym equipment would fit in it.
The further out you go, the better value you're getting. Yeah.
But it's still more money.
I just don't want to build something that won't fit the gym equipment.
I know what you mean.
I'm after going through all the dimensions today with Dermot
for what's needed in the gym. He wants to go even further.
A few hours later, all the gym equipment's been measured and
templates have been cut. That's that sorted then.
Even if you're running.. Flying!
Dermot runs like this I suppose.
I don't do that.
If you want to widen that, I'll widen it.
I could've been coming back in here to dig a foundation. Yeah.
Well that's very fair. That's incredibly fair.
It is easy to do it now when there's no blockwork up.
But if it was this time next week, mightn't be so happy about it.
The gym will now work.
It'll be tight but it'll work.
We're probably looking now around the 4,500 mark.
We were at 3,600.
I'd say between the bits and bobs, we're up around 4,500.
True to his word, Dr. Pat has already started work on his build diary.
The diary is coming along slowly.
Every little bit of a build, I want to document what's happening.
We'll probably forget how it looks at the moment.
Things like that.
The diary is jotting it all down.
♪ Rock me momma like a wagon wheel.
♪ Rock my momma.
♪ Hey hey.
Doctor Pat's not just the Anton Chekov of Nenagh.
He also enjoys a regular jam with the Tipperary Thrashers,
a band he formed with some pals a few years ago.
Tonight was a bit of craic.
You spend so long on building sites and it's questions and answers
and budgets and it's lovely to get a break from that.
It's really nice to get a break and go and see somebody that you're getting to know.
And see another side to them. That's what I saw tonight.
The fun side of Pat and they weren't bad.
I've seen worse!
The whole thing about playing music is a great break from the
mud and the builders and the day job.
It's a marvellous break, a marvellous thing away from it.
It's great to see Dermot fitting in so well and
people coming up to him and they'd plans of houses
and all kinds of country places.
Can we draw on this? You can of course.
There was guys with farms, locals, people from the town.
They all kind of came up and wanted their bit of advice.
Then there was the bar owner himself. They all had questions.
It was all a bit of fun and it was nice to be able to help out
and meet a few of the local people.
2 weeks later, the extended footprint of the new gym has been laid.
But a worrying complication has now emerged.
Ray contact me a couple of days ago.
There was a bit of an issue with the roof of the new build.
I mean the brand new build, the stuff that was added on a couple of weeks ago by Pat and Marita.
The gym and the bedroom.
Well lads. Hi Dermot. How are you?
Good. Yourself? I'm great.
A day into the blockwork we started setting out the levels.
We discovered we're missing a metre somewhere along the line
as to where the roof is going to start and where it's going to finish.
So it's a whole different detail to what's on the drawing.
The higher ceiling height of the master bedroom and gym means
that the roof of the extension rises above the existing eaves.
The cost of overlapping and joining the new roof to the old will depend
entirely on the condition of the 60 year old trusses underneath.
If we have to tie a new roof into an old roof, we have to open up the old roof.
That could throw up a load of issues.
That actually looks okay.
It seems good and solid all there, yeah.
It's as good as you could hope for. It's solid. That's good then.
Good news, yeah.
There shouldn't be a problem structurally with it anyway.
We seem to have a solution to it but at the end of the day,
we don't have costing for Pat and Marita.
It's their house and they're paying for it so they need to know how much
it's going to cost and that there's an awful lot more work involved
in what has to be done now than we thought originally.
I have no idea what's going on with the roof whatsoever.
I believe there's something going on with Ray and Dermot.
I don't know what it is.
We're completely in the dark. We don't know.
Maybe ignorance is bliss and we don't want to know.
They'll come back the next time and tell us it's all sorted out.
Hopefully!
3 weeks later there's been good progress on site and the blockwork
of the new wing is in place.
But it's still not clear how the roof of the bedroom extension will be weatherproofed.
So far Patricia's not happy with the figures.
I got a horrific cost this morning.
It seems a lot of the big bulk money item in it is the lead
and lead flashing.
I wouldn't accept what's on the table at the moment.
To me, there's another solution there that's more cost effective.
The cost just for this section is up at 4,300.
I would've said 2,000 maybe 2,500.
I don't think we need to use the amount of lead flashing that's in it.
I want to have a chat with Dermot and see if there's another way of doing it, without using lead.
Let's go and have a look at it.
The spec of the new roof isn't the only thing troubling the budget.
The higher the ceiling, the higher the cost.
Last week we had ceiling height more or less agreed.
Then we were sent a drawing which was completely different to what Dermot had said.
The whole thing is higher again which means we're going further into the roof.
The higher you go, the more work that's involved.
I just want to know how much it's going to cost.
It's an extra grand, okay.
We don't need to add an extra grand when this is hanging out here at 4,300 at the moment.
We could ask Pat and Marita? No.
It was never in the cost plan, it was never in the tender.
It was never in the construction drawings to do it.
We could never afford it so how come we can afford it now? We can't.
It's staying now? Yes.
Guaranteed no change? Guaranteed no change.
And that's a guarantee you can rely on.
When we were measuring up all of this and pricing it,
we were pricing it for a 2.4 high ceiling which is a normal ceiling in a normal house.
None of the ceilings in here are normal.
So I thought let's go up and over by an extra foot
to give you a higher ceiling in the bedroom.
Anyway, it was priced up. That cost an extra 1,000 euro.
That's something I'm throwing out at you.
I think it would benefit from it but it's your money.
I know I'd agreed that I wasn't going to broach the subject again.
That was a bit of a lie.
So anyway, I was always going to broach it.
I just felt that it's not me who should be making this call.
It's Pat and Marita.
If it's not something that you want to do, that's fine but it's there.
There's an opportunity there to do it.
Really the call is yours. It's not mine.
I just in my heart of hearts knew that it was a missed opportunity.
I don't mind the extra thousand.
We might as well pay the extra 1,000 to have the ceiling raised.
Especially when the ceilings are so high in the main house.
What can I say? I have to give it to Dermot.
He's a trier and he never gives up.
That's just a pure example. I should've known.
If you can afford it, it would be lovely.
God loves a trier. You never give up.
All the giving out in the world, it makes no difference.
They'd make great doctors.
They'd be great at delivering bad news.
With a little research, Dermot sources a cheaper alternative
to the pricy lead flashing.
A combination of pressed metal sheeting and a synthetic membrane
that will seal the join between the old roof and the new.
The roof membrane will come in here, weld on to this which will be
fully fixed into the structure.
Then the slates will come down over this which will hide this.
Will this negate the need for lead?
Yes. Once you use this there's no requirement for lead.
What it means is we have one tiny detail change that actually saves a fortune.
It's much easier, it's much simpler.
It makes life so much easier now.
To give his clients a better idea of how the house will relate
to the landscape around it, Dermot takes them to see The Stables
at Newcastle Estate Demesne in County Longford,
designed by ODOS Architects.
Now we're into the new extension.
This is called The Platform House.
If you stand here and look out over the garden.
The reason it's called The Platform House is because it floats like a platform.
You can imagine hay, meadow, wildflowers.
Everything coming right up to the window.
The whole house floats above it.
This is really about the boardwalk and lifting the sitting room up.
Do you get it? Yeah.
I love the house.
What I really love about it is how it floats above its surroundings.
That means the landscape appears to be uninterrupted.
It's not manicured, it's not a garden coming up to meet a house.
The house actually floats over the landscape.
We're into the kitchen here.
I want to show you the boardwalk.
This was one of the concepts for your sitting room.
The sliding doors would open and this platform would reach over.
I really like it.
It's like you're hovering over the landscape and you're leaving no footprint on it at all.
It also reminds me of a kind of a viewing platform on safari or something.
It's really nice actually.
Yeah, I really do like it.
I see now what you mean.
This is the boardwalk.
It basically is a deck, a patio area but there's a very clear edge to it.
There's a touch of the treehouse about it.
A little bit, yeah.
Absolutely, you've sold me on it. Yeah, definitely.
It's a house on a platform which is exactly what I want their boardwalk to do.
This house does this in an amazing way.
Today, windows and doors are being fitted to the new extension
but given the slow progress of the last few weeks, construction is way behind.
We're a long way behind schedule at the moment.
We're at least a month behind. Maybe more.
With the windows and doors gone in now, it'll start to move.
It has to start moving.
There's 19 windows, 3 patio doors and a front hardwood door.
We'll be pretty busy for the day here.
Look at them. Very good.
They're lovely.
It makes the space a lot bigger.
It does. I don't know why.
They're bloody huge.
You get a real sense of what the room's going to feel like when it's finished.
It's a lot airier.
Even now as the building takes shape, Pat's not entirely sure he likes what he sees.
The shape of the thing, it's a bit disconcerting.
You're seeing big angles and blocks.
A bit of me thinks what are they doing here.
I'm wondering do I like this at all.
I hope that it'll start to look more like a house in time.
Just these big piles of blocks aren't really doing it for me.
I think it's just so angular.
A bit like the bow of the Titanic coming at you.
We'll wait and see what it develops into.
Right now I could take it or leave it.
I love it.
I love the way the roofs go different ways. I love that.
Do you not think it looks like you couldn't make up your mind
which way the roof was going? I think it's good.
I know he'll be alright.
That's just Pat.
But echoes of the Titanic aren't limited to the exterior.
Inside, Dermot sees another alarming development and this one's below deck.
This is to be a window seat. That was 450 off the ground.
I think it's gone in too low.
It's too low to be a window seat.
Secondly, is our deck outside going to run into the window? Yeah.
It is? Yeah.
I questioned this at the time.
I think it's gone in too low.
That window head looks about 100mm below that one.
You took them windows up higher and you never lifted that one.
Nobody gave any indication to me to move this one up.
That head height stayed the same as it was in the original plan.
I was given a size for the window.
They were always at the same head height.
A bit late telling me that now. I know.
Because this is lower, it now means that the seat doesn't work,
the deck doesn't work.
It's another step back when we need to be going forward.
It's a window detail that was questioned at the time.
I asked Dermot to look into it.
I told him he'd be looking out under the deck from the kitchen.
The decking is supposed to come in to the bottom of the window sill
not to the bottom of the window.
He didn't say window sill. He said to the bottom of the window.
I'm worried about how that's going to be on the outside.
Do you want to go outside and have a look at it?
I'm going backwards when I should be going forwards.
It's all time and we're well behind schedule as it is.
We can't afford to be losing days like that.
At the moment the decking is going to come in on top of the window like that.
Well you designed it.
I didn't design that there. I designed it up higher.
Well I had it in up higher and I cut the blocks out of it
for the genius that came up with the height of that window.
I gave them the bottom dimension of the window.
He was working from the top. I was working from the bottom.
We have to take that up.
There's a good bit of work in that Dermot.
I know that there's a couple of days work in it.
I know it's a pain in the ass to move that window.
I get where they're coming from but I suppose my job here is to make
sure that the building works, that it looks well and that all the details work well together.
What am I actually going to do?
Probably go into that corner and hit my head off the wall for 5 minutes.
My job is to match the energies of the building to the occupants and vice versa.
I honestly don't know how to react to this.
A big issue here is the hob.
I'm really trying to keep an open mind on this.
He was listening but I think he was taking it with a pinch of salt.
The roof of the extended bedroom and gym is almost complete.
It's a good detail. We're happy with it.
It's working perfect.
The extra work and the research in seeing the new products that
are out there and available, have definitely paid off for the client.
We're looking at an extra 2,000 euro.
That includes the builders work, working up in the slope of the roof,
the new membrane, the new flashing, all the insulation and everybody's happy.
If only that were true.
This build is all about the alignment of energies and natural elements.
A harmony Marita feels has yet to be achieved.
I had a few concerns with regards to the Feng Shui of the house so
Nina has agreed to come and have a look.
She's an expert in her field.
Feng Shui is all about the relationship between
occupants of a building and the building itself.
My job is to match the energies of the building to the occupants and vice versa.
Both Pat and I find that the Feng Shui is important.
You can feel the difference in a house when you come in.
It's free flowing. It's a better space really.
This is where all the energy comes in so it's all about health,
wealth, opportunities, harmony, happiness for the occupants of the home.
The most important thing here, particularly this wall here, is to fix this problem.
This is actually a Feng Shui taboo.
It's a sharp corner facing straight towards the front door.
Why is that a taboo, to have an angle in a hall?
A very sharp corner like that facing towards the door,
particularly on the inside or directly opposite on the outside,
would affect the health of the occupants.
A taboo is a do not do it.
Could we round it? Yes, that's absolutely fair enough.
So where's the next issue?
The next issue is within the kitchen area.
I honestly don't know how to react to this.
Obviously architecture is a science things happen for a reason.
This isn't scientific.
I'm not.. I'm not 100% convinced.
A big issue here is the hob up against a wall behind which there's a toilet.
The toilet or the hob position have to be reconsidered.
You mean either move the toilet or move the job?
Yes because every time somebody uses that toilet and flushes it,
they're emptying the contents of the toilet into the pan
from which the food will be served for dinner that night.
So that's the implication. I hate to be as graphic as that.
That is actually quite serious. There is a cure.
What's the cure? I have proposed that cure.
The cure is to sit a very heavy cast metal item
on the floor, somewhere where it's not a trip hazard wthin the toilet
area, to stop the two mixing. Okay.
What I don't get is that you can make a big mistake but
sticking a big weight in the toilet will solve all of that.
Now that's what I don't believe. That's the bit I don't get.
I thought Dermot was pooh-poohing the Feng Shui thing.
He was listening but I think he was taking it all with a pinch of salt.
The hob actually represents the man of the house.
The sink, the ying energy, represents the woman of the house.
In this instance, it's obvious that the hob is positioned
directly opposite the sink and vice versa which means
that you have fire which is the hob and water, opposite one another.
Fire and water don't work.
This will create arguments in the house.
They'll be sudden, short lived but a lot will be said in that time
that could hurt very deeply.
Quick question. Is there a cure? No there isn't.
To this, this is quite serious.
Where does it go? This is a problem.
We can't leave it in the middle of the floor.
That means the woman of the home won't be supported.
That's the simple answer.
Okay well that's a bit of an issue.
It is.
If you put the hob in the island unit, does that mean the man is unsupported?
Then you've got another problem.
We can't have that. I know that for definite.
He's going to have an affair or take up drinking. Problematic.
If Marita strongly believes in it, it becomes part of my brief.
I don't want either yourself or Pat to be unsupported
in the marriage.
I don't want to be responsible for your divorce.
I don't want to be responsible for Pat's drinking habits
and I certainly don't want to be part of any affair.
So the sink has to move.
Doesn't it? Yeah, it does.
While she has Dermot, Pat and Nina together in one place,
Marita takes them to see a kitchen she's been coveting for several weeks.
This is the kitchen you like. Tell me why you like it.
I like the curves.
I was worried that I had only seen this one kitchen and
I was aware that he wouldn't like the curves.
I'm not convinced on the curves.
I didn't think you would be.
What do you think Pat? It's not bad.
It's a kitchen.
Not bad is not great. You don't love it?
I don't love any kitchen.
I save my love for things that aren't kitchens.
Pat no more wanted to be here.
I'd say if you'd ask him if I chop off your right arm, you can go,
he would've given me the right arm.
He didn't want to be here but in saying that, it was so important
that Pat was here just so he could see the track that we're taking
the inside of the house from here on in.
I had already done my own drawings.
I had already picked out images of how I want it to look.
See these images here.
There's a full working kitchen here but it doesn't really feel it.
This is what I would've seen a Pat and Marita kitchen looking like.
It's not really a kitchen kitchen.
It's more of a kitchen lounge space.
There's no problem if you store a load of books in it.
It's a space that becomes everything.
This is the feel that I wanted. Books, window seats.
It's not a real kitchen feel to it at all.
No. It's a dining/living space, reading space, library.
I've built in the window seats on both sides.
There's loads of little places to rest and to sit.
The kids can sit up there, curl up. You can read the newspaper.
It's a space that reflects what you need it for and your
personalities but the whole family. It does something for everybody.
I like it. That seems like a great idea.
Good.
I had no interest in coming to a kitchen showroom today.
Marita wanted me to come along but I'm pleasantly surprised.
Dermot really made sense.
Where are we on Feng Shui with this?
I think it's absolutely beautiful.
Today went really well.
Kitchens are obviously his big thing.
Proposing such drastic changes for him was quite a big deal
and it was great to have that discussion and find the design solutions,
put it all together and end up with a Feng Shui friendly kitchen
that met with all of his design needs as well.
As the build nears completion, Dermot convenes a meeting on
what will be the final unifying element of the design.
The 50 shades of the finished extension. Well, 4 anyway.
I've brought you into the woodlands in the rain to show you some
colours that I've proposed for the house.
Anything except grey.
I'll look at any colour as long as it's not grey.
What..
It's boring, it's miserable, it makes me sad.
It makes me feel down. I don't like it.
It doesn't look right.
It doesn't fit in with a forest scene.
It's just not right for the place. Okay. You Marita?
There's not really much to add to that, is there? No.
The house has been grey and the inside of the house has been
either grey or blue.
So it'd be nice to steer away from grey.
No matter what we do, we're not going to let him do grey.
ABG. Anything but grey.
You know the way you said you didn't like grey. Yeah.
Well, what I have proposed to do.. Your face!
Four shades of grey.
The whole idea behind this was that we have four different
colours of grey as we have four different parts of the building.
God, I don't know.
I had in my head, four different shades of grey,
painting each element of the building one of them.
Some of these dark greys, the browny greys.
You can see them all around you.
Look at the colours that are on the tree.
No, they're brown. Exactly. Brown-grey.
Brown is okay. Yeah but what about grey?
That's brown-grey.
But look at that in the pallet of the grass and the trees.
I think that works very well.
I don't know. Have you a plan B?
No.
I do. What I've done here is I've painted up loads of different
bricks and blocks in different shades of grey.
It's all grey.
Plan B is greyer than plan A grey.
If you hold that up.
Close one eye. That's the same colour as the tree.
Yeah, it's very like it.
These are the same colour as the stones.
I can see where you're coming from.
I'm afraid I can too.
Slowly, as they started to look around and started to really
look at the colours that exists in the woodland, they could
see every single block could be related back to something you could see around you.
I'm afraid you're right.
You promise it'll look alright? I promise.
I don't know how he got it past us.
I'm seeing grey everywhere now.
This grey is seeping into my soul. It's getting into me.
He says everywhere you look you see grey.
I didn't before but I'm starting to now.
It's very strange.
After 23 weeks, construction at The Harrolds' 17th and final home is complete.
The 1950's bungalow where Pat grew up has been transformed into a
spacious modern residence.
The old house nestled in the arms of its new extended layout.
The big premise behind this project was accommodating the needs of
three generations of one family.
There's Granny, it's her house and they're all moving in so
it needed to accommodate Granny.
Then you had Pat and Marita who both had incredibly
different needs and then there's almost two generations of kids.
To accommodate everybody you need tonnes of room.
We didn't have the budget for that.
We had the original house and a budget to do an extension.
Whatever happened here had to work incredibly hard.
The basic premise of the design is two blocks.
You've got a living block and a bedroom block.
The bedroom block is the private space and then the living space
is back overlooking the garden, the social space.
It's a collection of little buildings, all connected back up to the main house.
I think the main house still reads the most dominant.
How much can you praise your own house?
It just completely suits us.
It's where I'm from. It's a dream come true.
I think Pat just wanted a warm and cosy home.
He wanted his books all around him.
Marita wanted something big, open, spacious, contemporary.
For me, the trick was to marry the two.
I think by using all of the walls to get Pat's books onto them and
create window seats and nooks and crannies that when Pat sits into it,
it feels like a warm and inviting home.
The house isn't actually that big but it wanders around so it's a
feeling that it's a really big house. It's clever.
Yeah, it is.
This room, I've always loved the view of the trees.
The woodland out here was incredibly important.
This is what this site is all about.
It's not manicured, it's not pretty but it's one of the nicest
gardens I've seen in a long time.
All I wanted to do here was capture that.
Yes, we have a white kitchen but we also have a deep, dark timber
island unit in the middle.
There's a lot of timber in this house and I think
that connects it back to the woodland.
The grey does bring out the green beautifully Dermot.
Say that again!
I want to hear that.
I have to say, you knew what you were doing.
Looks great. I couldn't really see it any other colour.
When the paint starts flaking I'd say we'll paint it the
same colours that Dermot came up with.
I love the idea of the sitting room three steps up.
You really do feel elevated and you can see the garden so well.
It's very good.
When the door is open it's very much an open plan space.
Because we didn't have the budget to create hundreds of rooms here,
we have this.
This does shut it down. It's lovely, yeah.
It just makes it cosy.
When you put in a conventional door it's designed to be closed most of the time.
When you put in a door that slides away, it's designed to be open most of the time.
All of the doors that are in this space are designed to
be open all of the time but if you need to make it feel cosier,
you can shut it down in different segments.
It makes one room into two rooms.
Dermot's amazing really.
He really does listen to you. He really does take it in.
He'd had every right to be extremely arrogant but he isn't.
He just really knows what he's doing and he really does do his best to make you happy.
Out onto the boardwalk.
The boardwalk is part of the building and it extends
out and floats over the landscape.
It's the final journey in the house.
It was really important that it didn't touch the land.
The house almost becomes separate to the garden.
You're floating over it.
We had the house Feng Shui-ed and in the process we've lost a bathroom.
In a house with 7 people, to lose a bathroom I think is a big deal.
I'd be happier to get rid of it than to have to cope with what Nina said
about emptying the contents of your toilet into your saucepans.
When I heard that, that was it.
You can't unhear it. No.
Hello. How are you?
Welcome back to your home. Thank you.
What do you think? It's wonderful.
Do you like it?
Of course.
This is your bedroom here.
You've got a bathroom at the end.
You've got your telly on the wall.
Are they going to give me my own bed?
You want your own bed back? I do.
I'm sure they'll give you your own bed back.
This is the 17th house that we have lived in since we got marrie 22 years ago.
I think this is definitely the final one.
Please God it'll be the final one.
A beautiful home. It just feels like home.
Wow!
I love it!
I think Dermot did a very good job of my bedroom.
We started with a budget of 250,000.
Final account we look like we've a total spend of 275,000.
I think we have a very happy client at the end which
to me, is what it's all about.
Everything's turned out absolutely fabulous.
Very simple, very natural, very easy to live with.
Very harmonious and very balanced.
Well done. You should be proud of yourselves.
Likewise. It was nice to work with you.
It's nice to be able to work with someone like Dermot because
some of the things he wants can be a little bit out there.
To be able to do that and put it in practice and show that it works, it's very nice.
Cheers!
Well done everybody.
This was an incredible job to work on.
It's very rare you get a chance to design a house for three generations.
My challenge was to make it big, open, spacious but
also feel warm, cosy and intimate.
Pat and Marita have moved 17 times in their lifetime.
I hope this is the last move.
It's kind of the house that most people grew up in.
There's a lot riding on this one. There is I'm afraid.
Looks a mistake I think.
I didn't realise this would explode.
We'll move on and get over it.
It's exciting. It really is.
I'd love if it was a full-time job for me at the moment.
: Tracey Carr, RTE 2015.