After 100 years, even the original details that survived needed an upgrade. The beauty of the house was still apparent, but a serious injection of time, skill and money was required to restore it. And it’s the detailing that makes this type of house so appealing. The screen to the stairs dividing front and back hall, the paneling there and on the underside of the stairs, on the doors with their stained glass inserts.
In the past, winter meant huddling around a fire, or moving to keep warm. Insulation, modern heating systems and discreet solar panels allow the whole house to be enjoyed, always. But these had to be installed while respecting the appearance both inside and out.

“The single glazed stained glass window to the main stairs was removed from the original frames and cleaned” - easy to write in a sentence, but nerve wracking when taking a window of this size apart. Each glass panel was carefully sandwiched within a double glazed unit, which was then fitted into the new timber window. A huge sigh of relief went up on site when it was installed. And real pleasure at the end of the project seeing it unveiled!

Like many houses of the same age, it had great living rooms and bedrooms, but poor functional rooms such as kitchen, laundry etc. The new, playful extensions mean that those everyday rooms are bright and pleasant to be in. Careful selection of materials, and reuse of certain elements such as the oriel window above took time, but the efforts more than paid off. The clients took the curved pattern of the top floor windows from Clifford Smyth’s Shannon Rowing Club, a nice tribute to his first building in Limerick - the finished project is due in no small part to their attention to detail, enthusiasm and engagement throughout.