Architect Emmett Scanlon tells EMMA CULLINANabout the best extension he never built

When did you move in here?

When Philip and I bought the house in 2002, we met the woman we bought it from, who had lived here since it was built in 1937. She said: “I suppose you will knock everything down and build a big extension”, but when we moved in we didn’t do much, we just put in heating and painted it and waited. We felt we wouldn’t know what to do until we had spent time in the house.

What did you like about it?

What attracted us was that it was a very modest, quiet 1930s house that was very well built with nice detailing. It had its original steel windows which we really loved and by the kitchen there is an original bread oven with an open fire on the right and the tiled bread oven beside it, heated by the fire. The old Bakelite switches on the walls still work and the board of call bells that were here – even though you wouldn’t expect servants in a house this size – still had the beautiful old twisted wiring, which we replaced in the same style.

These houses come from an undervalued period and their features are less revered than those in Victorian and Georgian houses so they are more up for demolition and interference.

The house had a very typical layout for its type. There were rooms front and back with connecting doors. Beside these was a breakfastroom and beyond that was a galley kitchen, scullery and washroom.

There was also a side passage which the former owner – like a lot of people – had roofed over in polycarbonate to create an indoor/outdoor space.

What did you do to the house?

When we started thinking about what we would do to this house in 2003 I was still working at Grafton Architects on big projects and my expectation was that in my own house I would do something architecturally significant. I made models of extensions that ran right across the garden but in all those versions it seemed that the existing house was being compromised, the designs did not feel true to the way the house was organised.

We realised that we didn’t need more space, we just needed the existing space to work better. There was also that pressure culturally about whether we should move to a bigger house but it was very liberating to stay and figure out what the house needed.

There was a strong disconnection between the diningroom and kitchen which didn’t work when people came to dinner, and we wanted to connect to the garden, which is south-east facing and gets a lot of sunshine.

So I looked at how to exploit the dimensions, to take up the full width of the house and open it up where we could without undermining the integrity of these rooms.

I took down the wall between the diningroom and breakfastroom and made a glass box where the doors to the breakfastroom and diningroom used to be so that when you come in the front door you have a direct view of the garden.

We extended the house into the side passage and have a bathroom in there now. The architecture was determined by the house itself so it is a very quiet project in those terms.

We wanted to keep the house intact in terms of the windows, fireplaces and bread oven. It was important to hang onto that in a conservation light – they are irreplaceable.

We spent a lot of time driving around Dublin to see what people had done to their windows on houses from this era. We had spent seven years scraping and repairing our windows, trying to keep them, but they were very cold, they were 70 years old and beyond repair.

As we drove around we saw some very nice contemporary timber windows but one evening in Blackrock we found a house of the same period with new steel windows.

We knocked on the door and met a very nice man who worked in the Bank of Ireland on Baggot Street – in a very nice building with steel windows – and he got us the company name. It turned out to be Crittall in London who had made our original windows. We replaced all of the windows at the front – we enjoy the slimness of the section and amount of light they let in.

The gardens also look good

We have worked on the gardens in the front and back for seven years at a really nice steady pace. Gardens keep you grounded because you have to work at their pace, which has nothing to do with the world but just with the way things want to grow.

We got a cedar greenhouse that would naturally weather to grey and, having decided not to build an extension, we decided to use cedar on the house to clad the pebbledash and blockwork. The kitchen was not insulated and very cold so we insulated it on the outside – so as not lose the dimensions inside – and then clad it in cedar. The windows at the back of the house are also cedar – we dropped these windows to the ground. We also enlarged the doors onto the garden from the diningroom. The deck is also cedar so everything is going to weather grey and feel part of the garden.

I was particularly keen to make liners for the windows so that they would feel as deep as possible and it will be interesting to see the cedar on the inside and outside weathering differently.

We took down the wall between the diningroom and breakfastroom and marked it with a frame of oak. John, from Carlow, made the oak elements and he was critical to the process. The floors were pine yellow and felt cold and we replaced them with oak.

What was it like being your own architect?

It was interesting. I hadn’t done that before – well not to this extent. Philip was the client and I was the architect and it worked very well. It reminded me about how architecture needs a really good client to sometimes drive the reality of living, and to question the architect. It is not interesting for an architect to come in and do up a house and for the client to walk in and feel as if they are inhabiting a kind of project.

There is a sense that we are only occupying the house as part of a continuum and that ties in with having lived here for a while and seeing how the house was and meeting the woman who lived here and hearing the stories she told about the house.

Continuity is very important to Irish people, rather than erasing and starting again, that is an artificial concept and not how we live.

As people, we don’t get up in the morning and suddenly change and become a new person and erase the old one and I don’t think houses should be like that either.

The first story of a house is the people who made it. They are critical to the psychology of the place. What I like about building is meeting guys who make something of value – it is a collaborative thing.

We wanted the kitchen to be unique. It was made specifically for the room. It is all plywood inside and it was a bit of fun trying to make the room feel singular and in one material.

The kitchen feels warm and it is funny to think that this was probably considered the worst room at the back of the house, where the servants would work. The front rooms have more grandeur so I liked the idea of making a special kitchen.

You have Thonet dining chairs which suit this space

We got a lot of pieces from Olivia Delaney in 20th Century Furniture including a Danish teak dining table. We are not too thorough about period; the 1930s was quite a period of change. We have a Penguin book shelf that was designed for the Isokon building .

We bought the small red sofa from Wild Child and the Alvar Aalto table and chairs came from Nordic Living. We also collect 20th century art and have pieces by Pat Scott and William Scott.

Are you happy with the way the house has turned out?

Yes. Architecture needs to be pragmatic, the building needs to work well and be warmer, with lots of great insulation, but beyond that it also needs to be pleasurable with access to light, air and the garden.

We could have made more dramatic access to the garden by taking down walls but actually, in terms of the scale of the house and way we use the space, it allows us to open it up when we need to but on a day like today it feels realistic in terms of the Irish climate.

With minimum intervention we have allowed a lot more light in. By taking down the wall and making some key cuts to the outside, the house feels twice as big – we now call it the best extension we never built.