One reason why there won’t be any more house revamps

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m probably pretty useless at many things and one of them is looking at television for anything longer than a 25-minute window. The News, matches here and there, the odd horse race, the visit of the Queen to Ireland and Peppa Pig – all for varying reasons – are some of the things that I might watch, but I just find TV kind of hard going.

There might be accusations that ‘the lure of the village’ also invariably wins out in any contest I have with TV watching but here and there I concede to sitting down and viewing a programme of interest.

Anyway, over a couple of nights last week, I conceded, under a bit of friendly family pressure, to watching a so-called ‘programme of interest’ as architect Dermot Bannon proceeded to do a makeover on the new house that he bought in Drumcondra.

I really can’t make head nor tail of the man, but I have to concede that after starting to watch the programme there was just no getting off the chair.

For starters the money aspect floored me. Dermot bought a ‘semi’ in Drumcondra for €800,000 and was then ready to ‘flake’ another €350,000 (far, far more in the end) into it, to transform this understated residence into a magnificence.

I’m not sure watching such TV events how much of it is staged to make for good television but I’m also not so sure at the end of the programme whether I would ever be tempted to hire Dermot as my architect, if I ever did win the lotto.

It just seemed to be one disaster after the next. There was the garden that he didn’t bother clearing out until the house was almost finished . . . the skylight and air purifier were erected on the roof right beside where the stove flue would emerge . . . and on top of all that he built a ghastly and expensive wall in the middle of the backgarden.

Earlier, he had opted for running the downpipes to take the roof rainwater to be fitted internally – obviously for aesthetic purposes – but I could just see the day coming when these pipes would block and walls would have to be torn apart to clear them.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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