Architect Dermot Bannon is back with a new series of Ireland’s favourite home improvement show, Room To Improve.
Episode 3 of the new series sees Senator Katherine Zappone and Dr. Ann Louise Gilligan share a former hunting lodge, built in the early 20th century in Brittas, West County Dublin. Partners for 30 years and married for the last nine, the couple have fallen out of love with the wooden house they refer to as ‘the shanty’.
The challenge for architect Dermot Bannon will be to rehabilitate the dilapidated lodge and link it to an adjacent mews building. But with a limited budget – nowhere near enough to complete the plan Dermot initially devises – and two famously single-minded clients to deal with, compromise is the order of the day.
With battle lines drawn, conflict begins on day one, with Dermot presenting a long list of omissions and retentions required to meet the constraints of the budget, then insisting on the retention of a high picture window, even though a large supporting beam will bisect it.
As the build gets underway, demolition work exposes a wooden structure so flimsy and frail that builder Peter Finn fears the place might collapse before he and his crew can save it. In order to reinforce the building, specially made oak beams will have to be imported from Germany.
In order to maintain the integrity of his design, Dermot will require all the diplomacy and sales skills at his disposal but, despite his optimism, there’s no arguing with Katherine and Ann Louise.
It seems the architect has finally met his match. Twice.
Watch this episode of Room to Improve on Sunday, the 1st December at 9.30pm on RTE ONE.
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For press enquiries please contact:
Karleen Smyth @ LHP on 01 – 497 0313 | karleen@lhpublicity.ie
For more information on the seventh series of Room To Improve, please contact:
COCO Television on 01 – 4970817 or email info@cocotelevision.ie
About the show:
Featuring a diverse mix of renovations, refurbishments and new builds, this series will include a new construction in Mullingar, a self build project undertaken in Clane by homeowners back from the UK, the audacious extension of an old cottage in Westport, County Mayo and an exciting new extension for a young couple in Stillorgan.
This year, with budgets tighter than ever and clients’ expectations high, Dermot evolves his role as perfectionist designer to accomodate mediation, redrafting, builder-wrangling and some extremely delicate diplomacy. In this series, he’ll be dealing with clients who know exactly what they want. Or so they think.
Quantity surveyor Patricia Power returns to keep an eye on his more elaborate design excesses, negotiating the best deals and somehow making the impossible feasible.
Bringing Dermot’s designs to life are a feisty mix of local contractors and crews. As ever, there’ll be last minute design changes, construction dilemmas, designers gone AWOL, unpredictable weather, wars of will, clashes, compromise and colour galore as the weeks pass, budgets expand, schedules slip and tempers fray.
And that’s just for starters.
Six very different projects – one architect as headstrong and self-assured as ever. Still – there’s always Room To Improve.