Operation renovation: ‘I never thought I’d be able to afford a house in Dublin, let alone one smack in the middle of the city’

When Elaine Buckley set her heart on turning her tiny 136-year-old artisan cottage into a family home, she struggled to find a builder brave enough to tackle her ambitious plan, which involved flipping upside down and creating in a second storey

Elaine and Ronan in the new open-plan kitchen/dining area upstairs in their cottage. Photo: Frank McGrath

Orla Neligan

Telling someone like Elaine Buckley she ‘can’t’ or she ‘shouldn’t’ is like telling Tom Cruise he can’t do his own stunts, merely adding fuel to the already determined fire, so when four builders refused to take on her artisan cottage renovation in Dublin 7, it only made her more resolved to get it done.

Being a Limerick native, there may have been some temptation to ‘move home’ and get bang for her buck, but it becomes clear after just a few minutes of conversation that there’s a certain mettle to her metier.