My Dublin House

My Dublin House
St. Mary's

Intro

This blog is about our journey restoring and renovating our 'new' very old house in Dublin and how my ideas are reflected and incorporated into the house design. It is not just about design, but how the house will work for us a family with 2 very lively boys and trying to update the house to 21st Century living without taking away the traditional features, charm and history.


Hopefully a happy marriage of Scandi and Irish design and lifestyle!


I hope you will enjoy the journey with me, and feel free to comment at any time or send me an email if you have any question.

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Showing posts with label Dublin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dublin. Show all posts

Monday, 27 April 2015

7 weeks to go....

Will we be able to move in on the estimated date of completion?? who knows, but so far so good although a few challenges along the way.

The windows have returned after being restored by Callaghan's - great job, they have been restoring the frames and re-fitting the windows during the last 3 weeks and finally we can begin to see the house taking shape.

So much happening on-site, the whole house has now been re-plumbed and central heating installed as there was any, each room in the house was previously heated by a variation of stoves.

We are fitting two solid fuel stoves in the two reception rooms and the original marble surrounds are being restored in the process all done by Buckley's.

The garage shed is finished and ready for cladding with larch. This will be a very simple contemporary and modern finish with an 'invisible' door.

As for the external painting, we have decided to keep the house pink for a number of reasons, one being to change the colour we would have to apply for planning which will add more time and we need to get the scaffolding removed. Secondly, I quite like the idea of keeping the pink although I am not a 'pink' girl, but kinda funny with my 2 boys and husband although my eldest thinks it's embarrassing :-)

We are all so excited about nearly being there and ready to move into our house. We left London nearly 2 years ago and have been waiting for this since end of November 2013 when we went sale agreed on the house, but it will all be worth it as we will have a very special home for our little family.

Here's a few pics from the last few weeks of progress

The view up the street from the scaffolding.

Restored windows going back in, frames being fixed painted etc - nearly as new!

My studio taking shape, concrete floor ready for polishing.

What shade of white to choose......

Garage Shed ready for Larch cladding.

Inspecting the roof structure - one of our main challenges......

David would love to add a balcony on top of the house but might have an issue with the conservation department......
 - nice view though on a sunny day!

The ' Challenge' old roof structure cut down and new fitted onto the old one about 10-15 years ago, but now adding uneven pressure on latch and plaster ceiling in boys room causing cracks.... 


A few wires.... from one socket in each room to well many more!. 

En-suite pod in the master bedroom ready for tiling and glazing to go in.

Windows, plumbing and wiring - all happening in the boys room.

Drawing room nearing finish.

Windows, chimney re-pointing, painting, roof inspections all happening on the scaffolding.

Restored window going back in - proper daylight again. 

My 50 shades of grey..... but which one??

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Basement

Basement Update


The basement had been converted into a 2 bedroom apartment years ago and we are incorporating this back into the house with new stairs and a total renovation.

The basement has now been totally cleared out and ready to be re-modelled. The space is being fully renovated to deal with damp issues and re-configuation which will include a mud room, laundry room, wine cellar, my office and a spare room with an en-suite + lots and lots of storage space.

The space will be designed to allow as much light in as possible with light walls and finished off with a polished concrete floor with underfloor heating throughout.

Wine Cellar to be


The view from 'my office to be' to the garden (at present)

Office to be

Office to be

Laundry Room & Storage + stairs to be re-introduced

Beautiful old stone wall hidden behind plasterboards.

Thursday, 6 November 2014

Demolition

The demolition or 'enabling' work as the architects call it is progressing nicely, and various engineers, conservation people and specialist contractors have been visiting to review the next steps ie. restoration and how to go about it in a sensible (economic) way.

All very fascinating, we had a walk round with the team recently and one of the floor boards in the 'Green' room was lifted to see what's underneath.

The Green room is in the oldest part of the house 16th Century and was apparently where the tower of Booterstown Castle was ie. the 4 walls of this room is the remains of the tower, and the rest is under our floor boards = big chunks of stone! This means that in order insulate under the floor, the boards now need to be lifted as impossible to get under the floor as hoped.

So if the budget escalates to much we could always sell off a few stones as historical artefacts :-)

Here's a few pictures from recent visits.

Green Room - under our floors, remains of Booterstown Castle's Tower

Kitchen being stripped back - we found a copper tank & boiler tucked behind the units

Kitchen - many layers of 50-70's wallpaper hidden behind the cupboards.

Patio doors in Hall and plaster boards under stairs - all gone!

The current view from my new basement office.

Basement nearly stripped out and ready for renovation, underfloor heating and polished concrete floor.

View towards to the garden.

Where the stairs will be re-installed to the basement and remainder Laundry Room.

Beautiful stone walls hidden behind the plaster boards - hoping to clean these up.

Basement Guest Room - Stone Walls to be given a good clean and maybe paint.





Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Keys

We finally got the keys to our new home last Friday and we had an impromptu celebration picnic with friends in the garden. Can't quite believe we have this beautiful historical home with an amazing garden in a great location, never thought we would be so lucky to find anything this special.

The Front Door - Our Family

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

This blog

I have decided to write a blog about our 'new' house in Dublin. I moved to Dublin with my family last August 2013 from 20+ years in London SW11.

We never thought that we would find such an exceptional house in an enviable location and let alone be able to buy it, but with help from the London housing market being on a continuous up, we were and now we are nearly there. After putting an offer on the house back in November we will be the proud owners of St. Mary's by the end of this week.

This blog will be a diary following the renovations of the house together with my ideas, everyday tasks and how my life with Scandinavian design and living incorporate the Irish.

I hope you will enjoy the journey with me, and feel free to comment at any time or send me an email if you have any question.