Having decided to move back to Ireland from London, Sharon and Declan, were keen to find a home that would suit them and their three teenage children. ‘We were living in Kew at the time and were really keen to find something in Dublin that was close to the city centre and good schools.’ It was the elegant exterior of this Victorian home in Rathgar that attracted their attention and they could see that with work the interior could be equally as striking and had the potential to be transformed into a spacious family home. ‘We could see from the start that the house was basically sound, it looked so unloved but it had lovely proportions with a charming staircase leading up to the front door, it was split up into a warren of bedsits and offices but the shell of the rooms were there, all with lovely high ceilings with many of the original features still left intact,’ says Sharon.
For visual effect Sharon wallpapered the stairs to the basement with an Orla Kiely wallpaper, Multi Stem from Harlequin
Good idea!
Use a large pendant light to make a dramatic centrepiece in the kitchen over an island unit.
Having studied interior design Sharon had strong ideas as to how she wanted the house to look. ‘It is a protected structure so we had to adhere to very strict planning regulations, and had to employ a conservation architect, everything had to be run by Dublin City Council. We weren’t even allowed to change any of the glass in the windows, and had great problems convincing the planners to allow us to have the kitchen on the first floor. We actually didn’t add anything to the house, we just brought it back to life and updated it, while still preserving all the original features.’
‘I love hanging decorations in different places so use the chandeliers and a selection of twigs dotted around the house for a more unique look.’
The couple decided to tackle the project over a period of three years. ‘Although the house needed a lot of work we didn’t get it for a bargain so we had to be clever with the restoration and allocate our funds accordingly.’ The first stage was to gut the whole building, and remove all the partition walls that divided the house into bedsits and offices. ‘We had to re-wire, re-plumb, fit a new heating system and insulate. We restored all the original cornicing and ceiling roses and stripped off the layers of paint on shutters, luckily most of which were all in good order. Some of the fireplaces were missing so we went to great lengths to source fireplaces that suited the period of the house. We also put in a new staircase leading from the basement to the first floor and incorporated one of the smaller bedrooms into the master bedroom to make an en suite and walk-in wardrobe.’ The initial work took a period of 10 months to complete. ‘We sold our house in Kew to fund the project but didn’t actually move over to Ireland until the main structural work was complete, which actually ended up taking a bit longer than we thought it would, so we ended up staying with my parents for a couple of months,’ explains Sharon.
The elegant living room has modern sofas from Sofa Workshop and artwork that blends perfectly with the traditional backdrop for an eclectic look. The walls are painted in Lamp Room Gray by Farrow & Ball. The coffee table came from Lombok. The marble fire surround was from Ryan Smith Ltd.