Home of the Year Ireland 2024

[LadyEloise1]

Anyone watching?
I thought the home in Co. Clare was robbed of a place in the final.
It was stunning.

I watched it last night, I was doing the food shop so didn't give it my full attention but I thought they did a great job. Did it come out at €235k all in so €100k for the renovations, or €100k of their money plus the €50k grant? Fair going either way and they must have done a lot of the work. - (Fab house near my mam location wise she likes but would need a huge full reno so I'm always interested to know how far it stretches. )

I think they included the grant @pontipinemum.
I thought it was a great renovation.
They were so laid back, with no professional plans or an engineer to give it the once over, I thought Hugh would have a heart attack.
The one thing I didn't like - do you walk straight in to the living room from the street with no hallway?
If so that would be cold.
I wonder what the energy rating was and was there under floor heating ?

@LadyEloise1 no I'd prefer at least a little entrance. For the cold but also if you have someone at the door it'd just be nicer not to have the whole house on display or someone on the couch in pjs open to the whole village 😂

True 😂

Yes, you do. You can see where the original hall walls in this image.

On the other hand, this other sitting room is lovely.

And at least there is an actual fire in the fireplace.
I didn't like the empty fireplace under the tv - they could have put some candles in to dress the space.
Dunnes gave those realistic flickering battery operated fake ones in different sizes

Are you Hugh Wallace ? 😉
He is obsessed with a light for reading.

I am definitely not HW (though a restoration architect friend who has encountered him professionally speaks highly of him and says he is that twinkly!), but I’m with him on reading lights too, come to think of it. I’m fanatical about good reading lights.

Maybe I’ll go off and buy myself some patterned shirts…

(Same friend would beat Dermot Bannon to death with a shoe, incidentally, and refers sneeringly to ‘Bannon box’ extensions, so I take his liking of HW seriously.😀)

I googled Hugh last night, I from the little I found he is from Dundrum (Dublin) I though the had a bit of a soft non distinct country accent, didn't think he was Dub

I presume Hugh has Anglo Irish ancestors. His accent is to my ear a "posh Protestant" accent.
🤷‍♀️

In an article I read about him he said he grew up in a Protestant bubble so I think you're right about the accent @LadyEloise1.

Found that article after, Eloise had said.

It was mad to think he said it was actually illegal for him and his husband to be together when they met!

I think Hugh W is more 'comfortable suburban Dublin Protestant' than 'Anglo, but the cousins got the Palladian mansion', but I could be wrong...

He always seems nice, actually, insofar as I get a sense of him from TV. And he gave a talk at my local school of architecture a while back about restoring derelict city centre properties and made a lot of sense.

There was a particularly irritating Co Laois Tiktok airhead who inherited her granny's house on a previous season of The Great House Revival, and he was very kind and warm to her, even though she lurched from (1) hysterics over clearing anything at all out of the house (granny was clearly a hoarder, and the house had been left untouched since her death) because of warm feelings about her granny and her father, who had died young and whose room had been preserved, to (2) suddenly, after all that anguish, knocking down all internal walls, gutting the house and not allowing more than two stools, a sink and a vase from the old house to sully her completely standard white-walled newbuild with pink accents, and a big glass-walled extension kitchen and zany wall art.

I mean, it was a perfectly nice house, but after hearing her say that the challenge was going to be finding a way to merge honouring the granny's house of her happy memories in a renovation, it was a bit odd to see that the final house was internally a new build with absolutely no sense that anyone else other than a 25 year old Tiktok influencer had ever lived there. Hugh was immensely tactful, even though all the footage from all but the last ten minutes of the episode had clearly been filmed specially from the angle of 'young woman tries to find a way to incorporate the family past into her renovation'.

He's good at TV, and I think it revived his career. He's a recovering alcoholic who lost a lot in the crash, and I think relapsed, and I think TV became his thing as he got back out there.

I agree with you @TobarnanGealt re Hugh. Love the description.

Again I thought the wrong house went through.
It was dark and claustrophobic imo.
They were very harsh on the new builds.
I loved the interior of the home in Mayo. What lucky boys to have such a lovely home and fabulous play area outside.
I loved the exterior of the Antrim home but the interior wasn't to my taste.

Anyone else want to rip their own home up and start again after watching the show? 😂

Was it the small terraced house that belonged to the m/m couple, with the green render that went through? I liked that the best of the three.

I think the issue with the newbuilds, especially big ones like the two on this episode, that while a small, old terraced house will have existing problems you need to find a way to deal with (like the size of the two guys' house, and the tiny outdoor space). I thought they dealt with that nicely.

But with a newbuild on a big site and a fair amount of cash, you shouldn't really have any layout problems as such. I agreed with Hugh about the weirdly cramped kitchen layout in the second house -- I mean, the owners' logic was that they wanted the 'work' bit of the kitchen out of sight, but I don't see why they couldn't have allocated that bit a lot more room, so anyone cooking or prepping food wasn't cramped or banging their heads on the upper cupboards in what was essentially a small galley kitchen, off the 'show kitchen'. I mean, we all use the working part of the kitchen several times a day, so why not give yourself space to do it comfortably?

And loads of the big newbuilds seem to have the same issue with lots of hard surfaces and echoing because there's nothing, no rugs, curtains etc, to absorb any sound. Didn't they say the same about the one (in Cork?) that had a sort of mezzanine gallery and similar 'acoustic problems'?

They would all die in a panic at my house. Actually, they would come in the front door and instead of cooing about the 'generous' hall space, Amanda would immediately fall over a hurley and three pairs of shoes, and Sara would wonder whether the fact that there's a bannister spindle snapped off was a quirky design decision.

I have just caught up. I wasn’t keen on the new builds. Too much tile in the middle one and too many different things going on in the third. I liked the terrace, very clever use of space and altogether more coherent.

Definitely thought they made the right choice this week, I felt the two new builds were ridiculously big and in many rooms, the furniture was sort of stranded in the middle. I thought the first one in particular would age quite badly, it was very 'now' but sort of soulless and echoey (no doubt) and unless kept utterly pristine, could easily look grubby. There's such a thing as TOO much light..

Not a fan of this weeks houses at all, as the previous poster said the first new build was just soulless and the tile on the headboard I hated the last new build was just rich people with loads of money, no real style though the terrace house that went through was way too claustrophobic feeling for me

Agree 100%. Still waiting for a truly unique/captivating house this series. Disappointing. We're seeing a lot of people with the money to replicate things they see online or in magazines but very little true style and creativity.

Just caught up with it now, that marble tile headboard was so bizarre. The last house was a real mish mash, the ultra modern kitchen was so at odds with the hallway. The terrace house deserved to go through, definitely the best of the three.

As an aside, I loved Amanda's pink tunic with the calf length trousers, it was classy yet funky.

Going to watch Great House Revival over the weekend.

I was a bit disappointed this week. I liked the decor in one but there seemed to be such a warren of rooms. Number 2 reminded me of the one on Great House Revival this week. I wasn’t keen on it. And three gave me the dusting anxiety again although I thought it was very cheerful. It was very unassuming outside.

I disliked he one on Great House Revival a lot thisweek. Hated the kitchen and those curtains. I liked the outside.

I liked aspects of all of them but agree that House 1 was a little disjointed and incoherent and agree that the kitchen was too polished and bland compared to the rest of that room/the house. House 2 was immaculate obviously but didn't do much for me personally as a 'home', more like something you would have as a very high end corporate rental or for use on a TV show. House 3 was delightful in its way but very, very personal, definitely the one I would most like to spend time in though.

Again this week I thought the wrong house went through.
I preferred house 1 if that was the old house with a new extension designed by an owner architect and interior designer.
I thought the Louth house was way too fussy. I too got dusting anxiety.
The house going through was ok.
Not my style interior wise but the front exterior was lovely.

I didn't like the way they did the house in The Great House Restoration.
Because they were both architects I was keen to see what they'd done.
I really disliked the kitchen and the net voile curtains.

Hi yea I agree, though I knew as soon as I seen it they’d put house 2 though.. it ticks all their boxes, it felt very sterile to me. I didn’t love the third house but at least it had a bit of personality, I spent most of it laughing at Amanda’s face, she was horrified by it.

And the tiles on the fireplace of the second house! Tiles are obviously having a moment. I know fireplaces have tiles sometimes but I just didn’t like it. I wondered if his architects had been the couple in the Great House Restoration. It had the same feel to me.