Architect Dermot Bannon is back with a brand new series of Room To Improve featuring challenging and innovative new design projects.
Featuring a diverse mix of renovations, rescues and extensions, the series includes the creation of an ergonomic and welcoming ultra modern upside down home in Baldoyle; the rescue of a 170 year old house in Maynooth on the verge of collapse; the renovation of a 1960s bungalow in Puckaun, Co. Tippeary; the addition of a radical modern living extension built around a concrete wall to a 1920s Victorian house in Drogheda; and for the first time ever Dermot revisits some of the unique houses and home-owners from previous series.
As always, each build is fraught with human and financial drama: overstressed budgets, last minute changes of heart, unexpected disasters, unpredictable weather and the vagaries of an architect desperately, sometimes unsuccessfully, trying to convince his clients that he knows what’s best for them.
This year, with a range of budgets and demanding clients, Dermot Bannon balances his role as designer with that of diplomat, mediator and project manager as he fights his corner with feisty contractors and has his diplomacy skills tested by clients who know exactly what they want.
Quantity surveyor Patricia Power returns as Dermot’s budget-wrangling project manager and financial advisor: reigning in the designer’s more ambitious plans, cutting deals and adding a layer of sober fiscal practicality to the proceedings.
Exposed power lines, extensions built without foundations, unstable roofs, parasitic fungus, spiralling budgets, design dilemmas, slipping schedules, necessary compromise, unnecessary delays, absent home-owners, flights of fancy and frayed nerves – this series has it all.
Five unique and diverse episodes – one headstrong architect. Still – there’s always Room To Improve.
Episode 2
Airline pilot Ian Callaghan has bought a 1930s Victorian house in his hometown of Drogheda, County Louth, which he and his girlfriend Claire Moore are keen to call home.
Though full of charm and period features, the house is in dire need of renovation. Enter: architect Dermot Bannon with an innovative plan to retain the building’s century-old ambience while adding a radical modern living extension built around an exposed concrete wall.
The house is ideally located just 30 minutes from Dublin airport, but unfortunately, for half of every month, Ian isn’t. Absent on long haul flights for most of the build, he leaves Claire in charge of a site that’s soon beset with serious problems.
The first revelation comes with the discovery of dangerous, fifty year old wiring that will have to be replaced at considerable cost. But this is nothing compared to the shock of Dermot’s monolithic concrete wall and its deliberately distressed finish.
As a jetlagged Ian returns to site, he and Claire are determined to have Dermot rethink what they fear will be a huge, unwelcome eyesore. Naturally, Dermot has other plans.
Can he convince his clients that his high flying design is any more than a flight of fancy?
Episode two of Room to Improve airs on the 14th February 9.30pm on RTÉ ONE.