Keeping up appearances

The Noughties were about big extensions, big kitchens, big cushions and big prices for the lot, writes ORNA MULCAHY, Property Editor

EVERYONE agrees that Ireland extended itself this last decade, and it all started with our homes. We paid too much for them, and then spent even more doing them up and making them bigger. A rash of glossy magazine and home improvement programmes showed us how. Kevin McCloud became a God. Nirvana was getting “more space and light”.

No more was it a case of getting the builders in, but of allowing the builders and architects to move in and ruin your life. The owners of perfectly fine homes, perhaps upright and functioning for 50 or 100 years, felt impelled to pull them apart, even if it did near ruin their finances and mental health.

The planners gave their blessing to this brave new age. Pastiche and blending in was out. The backs of houses sprouted improbable additions, long glass and timber boxes, or house-height structures, to provide those unable to trade-up with the new essentials like en-suite bathrooms, dressingrooms, studies, home offices and, of course, playrooms. The rich and fearless dug into their foundations to create new basements, ideal for wine storage and the media room – an estate agent’s word for a dark room with leather chairs and a television.

The poky kitchens, breakfast rooms and sculleries of our ancestors were no longer right. They were blasted out to create the single most important room of the decade: the big kitchen. The idea of the big kitchen was that family and friends could hang out together, while cooking colourful casual meals, Jamie Oliver-style.

The kitchen as centre-of-operations cum salon demanded an unholy number of appliances, the preferred finish of stainless steel suggesting a professional industrialism that was in many cases wholly for show. The better the oven, the bigger the stash of take-away menus, it often seemed.

Not forgetting the outdoor kitchen – the deck or patio with is monumental barbeque and outdoor furniture for al fresco lunches. Beyond this indoor-outdoor space, gardens were tamed and boxed into straight lines by landscape gardeners who gave telephone number quotes and weren’t available for the next six months. Gravel was the new grass, flowers could be white or white, and bamboo found itself spot-lit throughout suburbia.

It was a bad decade for antiques. Solid, dull brown furniture were banished in favour of modern pieces made of pale oak, or high-gloss enamel, or steel, glass or even stone. The floors that they stood on changed too as we ventured beyond carpeting and timber, towards more sophisticated options (“options” being a big word this decade) like ceramic and stone.

Not all old was bad though. Vintage became the new buzz word. We sure as hell didn’t want Granny’s old side board, but we did want a Danish version of it from the 1970s, suitably scuffed and stained.

This was the decade when people tossed out their comfy traditional sofa and instead bought a vast L-shaped thing in velour or leather, perfectly matching in scale the flat screen replacing the mirror over the fireplace.

Sex in the Cityhad its effect. Women became kittenish and wanted their bedrooms to be pretty and seductive. Cue fairy lights threaded around the bed posts, and romance in the form of French style, slightly useless bow-legged furniture painted cream. The look could change thanks to the throw and scatter cushion combos much favoured by interior decorators in show apartments where the bright splash of pink mohair drew attention away from the size of the room.

The bathroom lost its clinical white clean look, evolving instead into a sanctuary courtesy of dim lighting, under-floor heating and scented candles. The idea was to chill and distress. Let’s hope they’re doing their job.