Back to nature

A draughty unloved 1950s house in south Dublin has become a warm, open-plan family home that embraces the outdoors, writes EMMA CULLINAN.We love the feature wooden wall that works both inside and outside

IT WAS THE neighbours who finally persuaded the Hetherington family to stay in their cold, shabby house near Killiney in Dublin. lnterior designer Michelle Hetherington, her husband Richard and son Adam had been living in the tired 1950s house while looking for a home to buy. The couple had expressed an interest in buying so many houses in Dún Laoghaire that they began to feel that they were personally financing the surveying of half of south Dublin.

“Our house was in rag order,” says Hetherington of their rented home, which used to belong to her husband’s granny. It was last done up four decades ago. “It had a funky orange carpet, 1970s wallpaper, mould in the bathroom and the odd mouse as a pet, but we put up with it as part of a grand plan to buy elsewhere.”

But with the house hunting not coming up with any quarry, Richard’s father suggested they buy the house they were in. “Then my mum said, ‘you have fantastic neighbours and you might not get that if you move’ and I thought, ‘you’re right’.

“I said I would stay in the house if I could have a big, glass-box extension,” says Michelle, and Richard agreed, so the couple took on the roles of designer (her) and client (him). “There were 26 revisions to my drawings,” laughs Michelle, referring to her exacting client.

In support of their extensive use of sustainable technologies through the build, Richard did climb on to the new ground-floor extension and unfurl a sedum roof, giving a lovely view from the couple’s first-floor bedroom. “It softens the outlook,” Hetherington says, and it certainly looks better than the usual grey asphalt, while the Dublin mountains in the distance add to the vista. The sedum has also softened the new Liscannor-stone wall that edges the patio to one side of the extension, where segments of sedum that have flown their rooftop home have settled in nicely. “It’s beautiful and changes with the seasons, from red to green to yellow.”

The couple nearly didn’t have that well-aspected bedroom at all, though, because the initial plan was to just have a ground-floor extension until – with a look to the future – Michelle asked an estate-agent friend for advice. He suggested that upstairs and downstairs be balanced. “If we had an amazing downstairs and an average upstairs you risked buyers going mad about the lower floor and then going upstairs and saying, ‘this isn’t for us’.”

Things were improved between storeys too: the stair banisters were taken out and replaced with glass and a Velux was put in above to open up the hall area. A bathroom was moved from a cramped position at the top of the stairs to the back of the house and four bedrooms were created (from a previous three), with the main bedroom now having a walk-in wardrobe and en suite bathroom.

Insulation was added in the roof, walls, and beneath floorboards which has made a huge difference, Hetherington says, referring to the house’s previous “Baltic conditions”. The old, draughty windows upstairs were replaced with a high performance aluminium-clad system from Dansk and they sit on new grey honed-limestone sills. While the window openings are the same size as before, thinner mullions actually make them seem bigger, she says.

More optical magic was carried out in her bedroom where a necessary beam running across one half of the ceiling was incorporated into a lowered ceiling feature that was matched on the other side of the room. More beam streaming was achieved in the lower extension, which was designed to be free of columns (piers and downpipes were buried in the walls), creating an uninterrupted expanse.

The space is also made to feel bigger by linking the internal limestone with that on the patio and also by running a wooden wall from inside, through the glass wall, into the garden. This rough, recycled wood creates a lovely contrast to the sleek lines of the kitchen and the honed stone and white walls of the living space. “I’ve skipped better stuff,” exclaimed the builder when the weathered cedar turned up on site. But its rugged form belies its credentials: it came from a demolished Amish barn in upstate New York (sourced by Ebony Co).

Nature is also embraced through the room’s dual-aspect glass walls to the patio at the side and the sloped garden to the rear, which has been stepped down to cope with the contours.

Hetherington loves texture and the rough hits the smooth in the kitchen, where white gloss doors with no handles – from Maise Interiors – sit beneath counters made from Durat, a recycled plastic product from Finland. The green scene continues with the appliances, which were chosen for their low-energy consumption, although the Smeg hob, by Italian architect Renzo Piano, was picked for its beauty alone (from KAL in Dublin).

Warmth is injected into the kitchen through its sociable layout. A peninsula unit (almost an island, but attached to a wall) sits up to six people and allows the cook to chat to family and friends while they make a meal.

The arrival of a baby daughter, Amélie, as the renovations were being finished has allowed the Hetheringtons to test their reconfigured home’s family friendliness and it’s working. “The changes have a made for very comfortable living,” says Michelle, “giving us warmth and space.” It’s so congenial she’s even moved her office here – into a converted garage at the side of the house.

And, true to form, the lovely neighbours were “fantastic” during the disruptive building work.

Michelle Hetherington Design, michellehetherington.com, tel: 087-2269699