Cool for cooks

A Greystones renovation that's anything but grey is home to a family that loves colour

A Greystones renovation that's anything but grey is home to a family that loves colour

EVEN THE MOST dedicated city dweller can be seduced by the light, the beach (albeit stony) and the relaxed pace of Greystones, Co Wicklow. Monique McQuaid and her husband Colm Duggan fell in love with an end-of-terrace house beside the sea and carried out a nine-month renovation to turn the wreck into a home. "The house hadn't been lived in for 10 years and was practically derelict," says McQuaid.

Her husband is an architect who specialises in residential projects and he has skilfully extended the back of the house to create a new kitchen and added windows to the side of the house to take advantage of the sea views.

The new kitchen serves, part of the year, as a venue for the small-scale cookery classes that McQuaid runs from home. She has been involved in the food industry for more than 20 years, having qualified from the Ballymaloe Cookery School in 1985. Since then, she has run her own firm catering for private and corporate clients.

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"The classes are different because the numbers are very small and I try to make it as enjoyable as possible. They're about cooking simple food with seasonal goods," she says. McQuaid is also a qualified and registered classical homeopath, so she's aware of how a good diet can help one's overall wellbeing.

The kitchen walls are angled to connect with the original house and this makes for a room that feels out of the ordinary. The floor boards, too, are placed purposefully out of line with the central island. The white kitchen units were bought at Ikea. "The whole back wall of units only cost about €1,000," McQuaid says. "We put them together in an afternoon and used toughened glass on the worktop and splashback to smarten things up. We really shopped around and got great value - the sink is from B&Q."

The wallpaper across the back wall is by Zoffany and was bought at Porter & Ryle, an interiors shop in Delgany, Co. Wicklow. The red leather chair came from McQuaid's grandmother's home.

The kitchen is connected to the sitting room by steps that rise towards an orange sofa, another Ikea buy. The chair next to it is red, and with curtains made from a bright Liberty fabric - it's not hard to deduce that colour is important to the couple. "I love the warmth of colour. For me there's nothing worse than beige, neutral colours." The strong colours also create a fun environment for McQuaid's two young sons.

One of her favourite colours is a paler shade, however. The front door of the house is painted with Farrow & Ball's Parma Grey, while Pale Powder was used on the exterior walls. In the garden, some old furniture and timber fencing is also painted in Parma Grey.

A corner of another living space has a traditionally-shaped pale green velvet sofa, contemporary lamps and an oriental style rug. "I like things not to match - having everything co-ordinating is a little boring. The modern lamps sit well with everything else here." But it is colour, again, that makes this room sing.

Incidentally, the windows throughout the house are curtain-less and, on the ground floor, blinds are positioned below the original stained glass panels in the upper part of the windows. "The windows were covered with curtains when we bought the house, but once they were down, we saw how beautiful the woodwork was and couldn't cover them again."