Bricking it Dublin

We, (Claire & Daragh) live in Dublin 7 with our two lovely lady babies Alice and Esther.

The Short version of all this is we have bought a house that is in complete bits and we haven’t a clue how we fast forward to the end where it is all white and ooh and ahh invoking. Oh how we will smirk all knowing, war wounded yet victorious at how we created this fabulous dwelling for practically nothing.

The Long winded version, aka this blog, begins back in the month of June 2013 where we decided to undertake a social experiment to see how many major life events you could cram into one month: Over a matter of weeks, we had a surprise wedding, christened our daughter Alice, went on honeymoon, returned to full-time work (me), found out Esther was on her merry way, oh and agreed to buy a derelict house right across the road from where we have lived for the past 9 years and yet had somehow never really noticed.

Other relevant details possibly include nuggets such as neither of us having any experience in developing, designing or building property. However, we are full of blind optimism, ideas that probably cost about a million quid to do and an embarassingly niave knowledge of architectural design features like inner courtyards and bifolding doors thanks to RTE’s Room to Improve. Daragh thinks it will all be fine: he has watched a lot of Grand Designs now that we have forked out for UPC Horizon and likes to say the phrase “what about going subterrean?” quite a bit. I recently qualified with a Higher Diploma in Pinterest courtesy of five million night feeds, and really like the colour grey even though everyone does now which is really annoying cos I have liked it for ages. Surely both of these leave me in pole position to design an entire house. I even think  I might be developing a “personal style”  which surely is very grown up and evolved. This could be best described as kind of Scandi Industrial chic.  I do however, more than suspect that anyone even remotely cool would probably tell me both Scandi and Industrial are fast following me old pal Grey down “even Penneys are doing it” Way and are like “soooo over”.

Ah well. Lets see where it all ends up. Hopefully in a fabulous double heighted temple of structural soundness, resplendent with gleaming shiny island and fab white ikea day bed for my mum* (these are my only must haves).

This is a blog to record the inepitude, traumas and lets be honest, probable raging rows we will encounter en route to creating our new forever home. It’s mainly really for us to capture and remember some of the process and help stop this from completely intertwining with everything else going on in the day to day whirlwind. If however, this reaches someone who has more of a clue than us or has been in our shoes, any advice or forebearing would be most gratefully received. We figure we need all the help we can get! Whatever happens, we are about to embark on the biggest project either of us have ever had to work on and this time, its our money and not someone else’s. Yep, we’re bricking it.

* I think I should explain that the day bed is not due to any infirmnent of my mother, it is more a shared inexplicable but very real infatuation with this particular piece of furniture. It taunts us on every ikea visit knowing that neither of us have a house right now that has room for any such whimsical treat of a piece of furniture specifically designed to snooze in during the day.