The owner of this Georgian Dublin home rebuilt it from the ground up
It takes courage to rebuild a Georgian house from the ground up, but that’s exactly what the owner of this Dublin home has done, with painstaking care and a pared-back aesthetic.
When the owner of this two-storey Georgian building viewed it for the first time, she walked through its warren-like rooms and struggled to imagine what she could do with it. Almost everything, from the walls to the roof, needed to be replaced. The estate agent managing the property did little to encourage her. “He told me it was a huge job,” she recalls. “He was almost warning me off, he told me everything needed to be done. And I remember thinking it was going to hurt, but I knew in my gut that I was going to do it anyway.”
The building ticked a number of boxes for the owner: it had a large garden, a rare thing in this part of Dublin; it was close to town and her son’s school; and it had not been updated by anyone else. “We didn’t want to be pulling out details that had only been added a few years before; that would have felt so wasteful.”
She devoted herself to the building for two years, sourcing everything from the floors to the radiators. It was not her first interior design project. A graphic designer and photographer, she had already worked on a number of buildings, making decisions with characteristic confidence and flair. This project, however, presented its own challenges. “There was a paralysing responsibility to stay true to the building, to not mess it up. The house was a listed building, it dated back to the late 1700s, and it was so old and so broken, I didn’t want to fix it the wrong way. I wanted to bring it back, make it liveable for a small family without destroying its integrity. There were a million ways to do that but it was so important to me that I found the right one for us.”
Cue months of online research and what she describes as thousands of sleepless nights as the house stood open to the sky. “It took a long time to pare down my look and I put a lot of effort into making it look like we didn’t make an effort.” At this, she laughs. “What’s that Dolly Parton line? It took a lot of money to look this cheap.”
Years of renting with a young family gave her a clear sense of what she wanted. “I knew we needed lots of storage. I didn’t want many surfaces to drop things on, I knew they would be clutter collectors. Everything has its place and that’s good for my head. And I used a lot of natural materials to take the edge off that, so that it didn’t feel too stark.” The garden is visible from the front door and from all the rooms of the ground floor. “I crave nature, grass, green.” For guests, she wanted to create an oasis in the middle of the city. “I knew I needed zones for everyone to do their own thing, so while the downstairs spaces flowed, I made sure that doors could be closed to create private spaces.”
Anything that could be reclaimed was reclaimed. The original bricks were cleaned and reused; Bangor blue slates were put on the roof; and the fireplaces, covered in years of paint, were restored to reveal Kilkenny marble that dated back to the 1700s and 1800s. Even the original footprint of the house stayed the same. She spent hours scouring salvage sites, trawling Adverts.ie and DoneDeal, and meeting dealers and attending auctions.
“Every sink, every tap, every handle has a story.” Paying attention to the ordinary things – the sweeping brush, the clothes horse, the light switches – was important to her. “I made all these things tactile so I would enjoy using them. For me, it’s about feel as well as function.” The result is a series of calm, earthy rooms, with a tight colour palette – Farrow & Ball’s Skimming Stone dominates – dotted with antique and vintage finds, some sourced on her travels with her husband to India and Morocco, others from her childhood home in Donegal.
What advice does she have for others considering a full renovation? “It’s not for the faint-hearted. Be really realistic about your budget and what you can achieve. And be very clear about what you want. Get the bones right and make it function for you, so it flows for the way you live. You will have to advocate for yourself so make sure you work with people who will listen to you and stay true to yourself.
“I worked with DUA architects Darragh Breathnach and Joe Keohane, who were incredibly supportive of how I wanted the house to look, feel and flow – they incorporated all our salvaged materials and manifested everything I visualised from the reconfiguring of the rooms down to the soft edges of the lime plaster. Time spent imagining is not time wasted because changes along the way are costly.”
She has no regrets about the many hours she spent revising her vision. “It didn’t come easily. It wasn’t a simple house. But I think I could have put less effort in and it wouldn’t have worked so well for my family. It feels like a calm and easy place to be in. I really tried to make every single thing feel right. So what was once paralysing has become empowering and liberating. I learned how to follow my heart and I gained the confidence to listen to my intuition. It’s a lovely feeling to have done my best to preserve the house with integrity and respect for its craftsmanship. And making a home where we can cocoon from the city and welcome friends and family.”
Photography Shantanu Starick
Styling Lesiele Juliet
This feature originally appeared in the autumn/winter 2024 issue of IMAGE Interiors. Have you thought about becoming a subscriber? Find out more, and sign up here.
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