Thousands were inspired. So with blind faith in their own good taste and a sadly misplaced sense of purpose with a rag-roller, they set about having a go.
Overnight, once perfectly presentable and saleable houses were butchered and woke up with faces that only their owners could love. Mass DIY suicide was never going to be pretty, but some even managed to do enough harm to damage the value of their homes.
So if emulating television DIY doesn’t work, we wondered, just how do you get a house that looks exactly like the one on the box? One solution is to buy the haute- couture version off the rack. On the Malahide road in north Dublin, you can do just that. No 64, a Georgian four-bed over basement, was one of the first subjects, and a shining star, of an episode of Showhouse, the RTE reality television series that pits two interior designers against each other in a double makeover spectacular.
The premise of the show is that each designer is given an identical house to fit out within a certain budget and time frame. On the launch evening, the public tours each property and votes for their favourite. In just nine weeks, No 64 was dragged from ugly Georgian duckling to primetime property laureate at a cost of €100,000. Now it’s for sale, for a very swanlike €2.15m, complete with most of the designer fixtures and fittings that were seen on screen.
The winning expert for No 64 was Mary Ryder, an experienced interior designer and project manager with a stint at MBK architects and several upmarket period renovations to her CV. For Ryder, competing in Showhouse meant stretching the very boundaries of her time-management skills, all with a camera crew in tow. She got the call to replace the property’s original designer on a Wednesday, saw the property on the Thursday and was told to have a full set of drawings by the following Monday.
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“The previous designer was said to have run screaming from the project after three weeks. By the time I came in, we had just nine weeks before deadline. A job like that should normally take about six months,” she says.
“We had to do everything at the same time, so we had plumbers standing on top of tilers. It’s a great tribute to all their professionalism that there wasn’t a murder on site,” says Ryder.
Not only that, but No 64 was a derelict shell, calling for a lot more than a few well-chosen throws, cushions and paint techniques.
“The house was totally stripped back. I think it must have been some sort of junkies’ den at some stage. There was graffiti on the walls and the smell was indescribable,” she says.
“The walls were bare brickwork, and when you were walking around on the first floor you had to watch your step or you’d end up in the basement. It was a real hard-hat site.”
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Then there were the constraints of filming. This was the first series of Showhouse, and one of the first to be filmed using a crew with expertise in the workings of cameras and lighting, not tiling and floorboards. Luckily, Ryder was no stranger to the camera, having featured in RTE’s flagship version of Changing Rooms.
“Having done Beyond the Hall Door, I was used to working on camera, so I knew how to work around the crew.
“You’re miked up from when you arrive at 8am until you leave at 10pm, though, so the main thing is trying to remember to disconnect it before you use the loo,” she says.
The owner and developer of the Georgian twin-set, Paul Dufficy, poured a substantial sum into the renovation of the original period features.
He matched and reinstalled ceiling roses and cornicing, reconditioned the original windows, and carefully saw to the architraves, shutters and panels. Beyond this, Ryder and her team of subcontractors had carte blanche on the scrubbing up of No 64.
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“This kind of project is open-chequebook stuff, but it was well-financed,” says Dufficy, who with his regular team of contractors restored the fabric of the building.
“If you have the knowledge and funding, you can get it as near as possible to the original. We were all up for it, motivated and we enjoyed it. But with the wrong men on a job like this, things can go wrong,” he says.
Things went right on the launch night for No 64, as Ryder’s distinctively modern take on the classic Georgian trophy home won a majority of public approval, earning the designer first place.
Ryder’s winning tactic was simple: to work with the period detail in situ — what she refers to as the “envelope” of the structure — and then add a contemporary insertion for modern living. Period Georgian and contemporary looks, she says, don’t need to be mutually exclusive.
“I often feel that people aren’t brave enough. You can have some fun with a period house, and the modern elements make it more interesting,” she says.
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“The rooms had great proportions, so we could scale everything upwards. In larger period rooms, you can afford more grandeur — use large, anchor pieces and accessorise them.”
In furnishing the main rooms, Ryder opted for a few “grand gesture” pieces and shunned fussy fabrics.
The palette chosen in the main rooms was rich cream, to reflect the large amount of natural light that floods Georgian rooms. In the basement, this worked to remarkable effect in brightening up a naturally dark, cold space.
“I think this was one of the reasons our house won over the other. People loved the basement, as it was so light-filled. We used a beautiful polished stone floor down there to reflect available light. Only one room in the basement had a dark colour — we painted the study a sort of burgundy. So it’s a warm, nurturing, cosy space,” she says.
A nursery, once the fourth bedroom, was painted lavender. “I went non- gender-specific. No blues or pinks.”
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The budget Dufficy allocated for Ryder’s scheme was €100,000, which the designer managed to work with, just about. “It was very, very tight. And that was with substantial trade discounts. But it’s not an achievable budget for a lay person. A regular homeowner would go through at least three times that amount,” she says.
Ryder brought in her own specialist contractors for more personalised elements: Finewood Furniture for the joinery, dressing room and large mirrors, Ryan Furniture for the modern kitchen, and Paul O’Neill Marble & Granite for the bathroom stonework and to realise her fireplace designs for the two reception rooms — modern marble shapes with a nod to the rooms’ classical past.
One of Ryder’s signature additions is the bookcase door that conceals the entrance to a bathroom, for which the designer had to “fatten out” a wall. A utility room was “squeezed” into an exiting narrow corridor, and adorned with a startling red stone composite worktop, which was christened “slapper red” by the workmen on site.
“I think the crew were praying for us to mess up in some way so they’d capture it. Then, on the last day, the purple-white sofa I’d ordered was late. When it arrived, they had to carry it around the back in the rain, up to their knees in mud. And to get a tighter grip, they took the protective covering off.
“So there’s this shot of me looking at them from an upstairs window, having several heart attacks, my sofa inches away from annihilation. Then they had to try and squeeze it through a freshly painted black gloss door frame. That was the only wobble, really,” she says.
Having returned to run her finger along the property after almost two years as a corporate let, Ryder is satisfied that her final product has endured.
“It was a live job, so nothing was mocked up for the cameras and no corners were cut. On Beyond the Hall Door, you’d do a bathroom, but it wouldn’t be plumbed in and the tiles wouldn’t be grouted, they’d use sand to make it look as though they were. But this was the finished product and had to be handed over, snagged and immaculate. It’s still the same as when I left it.”
Much of Ryder’s carefully selected furniture is in storage, but can be individually purchased along with the property.
Sherry FitzGerald, 01 845 4500