Zi7ZpiJVl2
It is a sad truth that sometimes the things we love the most have the power to hurt us in the most cruel and unusual ways. Yes, I’m looking at you, Home of the Year, The Great House Revival, Room to Improve, Home Rescue, Grand Designs, Interior Design Masters, Your Home Made Perfect and A Place in the Sun.
Whether it be the purchase of a fixer-upper, the hefty task of renovation, or a leisurely tour of some of the country’s most meticulously designed and innovatively built properties — other people’s homes and what they elect to do with them has long been a source of endless curiosity. Are these shows supposed to be aspirational, or could the Irish broadcaster be the teensiest bit tone-deaf? I’ll leave that up to you to decide because regardless of the intentions of those pulling the strings, I will eat it up every single time.
Let’s take the Irish trifecta; Home of the Year, The Great House Revival, and Room to Improve. Cumulatively, we’ve got everything. Maximalism, minimalism, contemporary, historical, crumbling, newbuild, stress, setbacks and by and large, a happy ending. It’s so extremely satisfying watching it all come together, seeing a happy homeowner or family settle into their new life with floor-to-ceiling windows, understanding why a certain perch is someone’s favourite space in their whole home. It is, above all else, comfort television.
Just the other day I was telling my boyfriend that I would like a room that would be not so much a home bar, but a speakeasy with leather seats and antique lamps draped over with vintage silk scarves. In fact, I will have an electrician come and rewire the room so that there is no big light at all, a beautiful amber tone will settle across the space and I will feel altogether very serene while I squint at my book and sip on my thimble full of sherry. You can imagine my shock when I saw the price of one singular bar stool. Maybe we can all just stand! I hear it’s good for circulation.
Since starting college, I’ve lived in eight different forms of accommodation, each offering a varying degree of mouldiness. There was Corrib Village on the University campus in Galway (grim), a little bedsit in a lovely woman’s attic in Dublin (cosy), a shockingly good value city centre apartment in which I lived with my ex (no questions, please). I now live in an apartment with my best friend in a village outside of Cork city and we’re doing our damnedest to make it a beautiful place to live insofar as we’re able when there’s still a reluctance to put down roots. Maybe someone will get married, someone will move to Australia, someone will move home or someone will do something annoying and I’ll have to kill them.
The carpeted floors have questionable stains we can’t seem to get rid of, the beds have a box spring that cuts potential storage in half, and we’re woken in the dead of night with command strips coming loose and frames falling with a bang. When will it be our turn to hammer nails into the wall?
