Room to Improve

[JaneJeffer]

New series tonight. Everyone ready for a million windows?

Re the staging I find this all a bit frustrating, we've just seen the original house with kids bikes or coats everywhere and suddenly they all disappear. There is no point in showing us the house with nothing personal in it, unless they are also showing us the original house in the same state. I love the show but this element puts me off and makes me wonder what else they are faking for TV.

I forgot I watched it. I thought that from the POV of making a welcoming and usable space for families dealing with CF, fundraising and of volunteers pulling together, it was very moving (I’ve never watched the Irish Strictly, so didn’t know the judge/presenter, so was a bit puzzled by his outfits until I realised — I was fascinated by his zips!), but I thought it wasn’t one of the more interesting episodes in terms of restoration/rethinking. Probably entirely understandably. You can’t make four separate mini-apartments with specific ventilation and fire safety requirements out of a Victorian house without lots of compromises. An architect friend who restored an old house for a cancer support charity said the same.

I think my favourite bits were the standoffs between Dermot and the interior designer.

Perhaps the fabulous new storage solutions have made all the Lego, nerf guns and coats magically stop being left around.

Tbh I wasn't crazy about the interior design of Tranquility House.
I wouldn't be searching furiously to see who the Interior Designer was on the show.
If I won the Lotto I'd get Gillian Sheppard, an interior architect of Sheppard Design to do my new house - a girl can dream !

I think it probably had to be easy to clean between families, so they may have been limited I furniture choices?

Yes, agree with this. Obviously it's a lovely and very worthwhile project to do, but as a TV show I - and I'd imagine most viewers - want to see realistic family homes being renovated and extended. It's the attainability that's attractive (even if they do all manage to find and extra €50k down the back of the sofa). Massive red-bricks in Rathgar just aren't on the cards for most of us.

Yesterday I went back and watched the first episode of this series — the one where a woman moved home from London into her old family home over their butcher shop in smalltown Mayo. I was a bit puzzled by the bit where she and Dermot go off to London apparently purely for him to show her a cool house with exposed joists and meet her friends! I felt as if there was an entirely different, much more difficult, real narrative somewhere (why had the house been left untouched and full of contents since the 1990s, especially if their father had been using the living room as a meat store until 2017? Had the house been left to all the siblings, or just Karen?), but I always enjoy the bits where a client just won’t go with the Dermot vision on joists or bed placement.

Not finished again tonight. Did they have a survey? Did the engineer lad get a friend to do the survey? Did the solicitor not flag up knows drainage issues?
And where will the dogs sleep?

All good points! There was a reference to it being the end of January 2025, which suggests they must have finished editing it like yesterday! DH was sadistically amused by the fact that the two lads started off all dapper, with their natty clothes and colour-coded clothes rails, and ended as hollow-eyed wrecks. He also decided they’d actually split up from the stress of the renovation, which was why they were living separately!

God, Dermot gets antsy when a client has their own ideas…😀

"God Dermot gets antsy when a client has their own ideas..."

He does @HareSalient

That's why I'd never use him.

What a shame we didn't get to see it finished.
How were they going to get the soil that still piled up in the back garden at the end of the episode, out ?
Walk it through the refurbed kitchen living area ????
I think the cost of the house plus the refurb brought it over €600,000
Is that a mad price for the North Strand ?
I'll have to check on Daft and MyHome

Yes, would have loved to see it finished, if it was only delayed by 5 or 6 weeks wonder why they didn't just postpone that part of the filming, They are two really nice guys and the house design is fabulous, hope one of the interior design mags does a spread on the finished house.

Having watched my kids buying houses...they over stretch to get anything.
One has a small house in a rural location, which looks fine but has a lot of issues. Plans to extend have to be postponed as there are boring issues like groundwork to be fixed.
One wanted to do up an old house, but cash buyers...builders...could outbid at any level and take their time with work. Also it was difficult to get a mortgage when a lot of work was needed, anywhere near water.
The third is buying at the absolute top of budget, not really where they want to live. Her in laws are horrified that it's at the edge of Dublin, not in a leafy suburb. It's structurally sound, I hope.
They have all rented in the inner city in Dublin, one was in a house similar to last nights. When it rained water came up to a tide mark on the walls. It is on the market for 550,000.
It is crazy.

Well, they needed to present something for the final episode of the series, I assume, rather than going ‘Whoops, sorry RTE, it’s only four episodes now!’ And as Dermot made a reference to it being January 2025, this is nearly ‘live’ — all the extra work needed with the groundwater etc meant it took far longer than planned, and in order to put some kind of ending on the episode, they just decided to finish the kitchen. Even then, they must have been right up against editing deadlines for broadcast!

I assume that was part of the reason Dermot looked so horrified when they discovered all that water under the basement — I mean, it’s not just an issue for the clients, it’s an issue for him as a tv presenter getting a time-sensitive project ready in time for broadcast.

(But yes, absolutely, I also wondered whether they were going to have to cover up the kitchen again, and truck more tonnes of soil out through the house. Though I suppose they may be terracing the garden, and using the soil? Which looked good-quality.)

I’m less surprised nothing showed up on a survey. We also bought an old wreck, and it’s been an endless succession of ‘surprises’.

Oh no, that's the final episode, I didn't realise that. Not many episodes in this series then.

Anyone else thinking that if you were a neighbour of that house you would be seriously worried about the amount of water that might be sitting under your house too !!!

Disappointed in last nights episode - lovely couple and lovely home but we only saw one wall / one room !!

I think so! I could be wrong…? My Instagram yesterday had a joke clip of Dermot and the QS (is she called Ciara? The nice, no-nonsense blonde woman?) saying ‘That’s a wrap!’ before walking off in opposite directions muttering rude things about one another. Dermot hissed ‘She’s a DESIGN KILLER!’ with every appearance of sincerity.😀

I missed the start last night so I need to go back and watch along with last week's which I missed because of the storm aftermath.

The man in the kitchen shop was hilarious about the mirror over the sink - "you don't want to be looking at yourself, well you would"^^

Yes, he was brilliantly deadpan. ‘Yeah, Dermot, you vain young bollix. I bet you’d be admiring yourself in your over-sink mirrors all day.’😀

HareSalient, you are right, final episode, 4 houses renovated plus Tranquility house converted to flats.

I was sure it was more episodes per series.

I think Tranquility House was supposed to be on last night, as bank holiday special .
I saw on the twitter that the indo did an article on the water issue in 2014.

Am I the only one who can't understand why one needs to see the garden while cooking!! Surely it's better to focus on the task in hand. I don't get the obsession in general, if I'm indoors I want to be indoors not looking at my garden, if I want to see my garden I'll go to my garden! Maybe it's just me...

Loved the kitchen guys joke too, there is something about the way Dubliners deliver a joke in such a serious way, I love it.

Absolutely
A swizz ! 😀

Also loved that comment 😂

I love having a view out the kitchen window, looking at the birds, trees and so on. Everyone’s different I guess. Dermot always likes glass and bringing the outside in though 😄

Well, the hob was on the island, so I think it’s less a matter of having a view of the garden than of talking to anyone else who’s in the kitchen without having your back to them? (According to DH, who is the cook of this household, and hates our temporary kitchen which is not only too small for anyone to hang around talking to him while he cooks, but is down a passage and across a hall to where the temporary dining table is…)

It seems to be the sink that is facing away from the windows and hence got the mirror treatment — but my question is ‘Where are the taps?’