Room to Improve (v2)

Wages are nuts as well if a young solicitor earn €100k plus (the figure someone quoted in the previous post), working from home for some of the week (possibly with kids under her feet) and in a office the rest. The whole thing is not sustainable, any more than the boom of 2004-2007 was.

yeh I guess. and I don't think ireland has the level of smallish property investors renting and flipping property to support a homes under the hammer style program. ( which sad to say we have on record) which is in season 26 1196 episodes

In fairness to the husband, he said at the start the wife wanted a house in Dublin. Sounds like he'd be happy anywhere, even down the country, but much of his business and her work is in Dublin so not easy to make the move. I can see them moving in a few years though, that back garden will get to them in the end. They'll get a good price for the house and can move somewhere with a bigger garden.

He got really emotional over those rocks, but obviously very personal to him.

I'd say eventually they'd move back to Sligo and buy a mansion there and do some sort of commuting to Dublin once or twice a week.

Dermot did a good job, ticked all their boxes and just about stayed within budget. He's getting better at this!

Gardens and plants seemed to be anathema to her anyway. Some people, more than you might think are like that. Many would live happily with outdoor spaces as easily maintained as that and do.

We have established ( although it was not mentioned on the programme) they fitted a samsung heat pump, so they changed the heating system. It was not shown on the tv programme except on a brief birds eye view of the whole property : you can make it out half way down the side wall of the garden. They also put exterior cladding on some (but not all - they kept the brick at the front) of the exterior walls. The rest is quite vague, for a series "all about grants", but at least the house turned out quite nice in the end and the couple seemed happy with it.

I would say its more for the kids, the garden is too small. Fine for toddlers, but when they start looking for trampolines and swings and so on, not great. Husband seemed a bit iffy about Dublin, passed the decision off as hers. So sounds like he'd be happy to go anywhere, and was not as pushy as it appeared to come across in the program. He seemed to have a strong connection to Sligo, so who knows in a few years.

I loved the idea of the stone tiles behind the coffee machine but did anyone else notice that the top row were mis-aligned? I'd be fuming if that happened to such a focal point of my renovation!

My one takeaway from the last episode was the cost of a planter - were they making it from gold? Think he was quoting €4k. You could easily make a wooden planter for around €200 - €300.

The other thing that infuriates me about RTI is that they are not happy to do things down the line. I know they need the shiny new finished house for the show, but it's unrealistic. It's better to do what you can now and then save to do the rest later, rather than overstretching with loans. I understand the logic behind putting the foundations for the shed in, but the shed/ outdoor room could have been left for later. Likewise, the trees / shrubs could be done at a later date, or better still, buy saplings for a fraction of the price and watch them grow.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I heard that all the swanky furniture is put in for the show and it doesn't belong to the owners. That always struck me with the show... the homeowners were often stretched beyond their budget but behold, they have a €2k armchair and €1k coffee table. I would prefer if we get to see the house as it is, rather than it being dressed by professionals with high-value rental pieces.

I couldn't figure out how they pulled that off. There were too many tiles to be from the single rock that he brought for cutting, and the size was off - the tiles looked too big to be from the rock they cut. They looked like shop-bought tiles but he was quite emotional about them, so I'm wrong or he should change his career to acting. Perhaps they had other larger rocks but they all looked very uniform.

I think there's some kind of reasonable middle ground to be had in fairness. A quick run through of the retrofit details and benefits would be informative and to be expected imo.

I certainly could have forgone the few minutes we lost seeing the 3 flutes in the kitchen and not a chef between them.

I noticed that too, but then I would expect that if Dermot went to the trouble of bringing a stone to Co. Laois to be cut, he probably took 2 or three, in case one cracked or did not work out or whatever. It looked like limestone? I thought the thinnest limestone could be cut was 1" but they must have succeeded in cutting it thinner to mach the level of the other tiles beside it. Great idea and it looks well.

I agree. Hundreds of thousands of people are in their homes shivering and with high energy bills, and were or are wondering about these grant aided insulation / energy upgrades. If they are worth going for etc. Still no wiser really. Even if it was just on a seperate off peak programme which could be recorded and watched again. Would be very cheap for RTE to make too. ( the cook on R to I in that other kitchen said he can make viewable content with a phone. I will not call him a flute like you do, lets just call him a cook ).

Got a screenshot: the grout line of the top row (above the shelf) is about half a centimetre further to the right of the rest of the run. Just a small detail but one that would set my OCD on edge!

Looking at the number of tiles they got, it certainly looks like Dermot brought a boot load of rocks to the stone masons rather than just the one we saw on-screen.

Maybe. That info is easily gotten online (I posted a link to it myself yesterday) but I suppose everyone wants everything spoon fed these days

Oh sorry I meant the information a reasonable person would like to know.

The insulation level in the attic. For the lamb of jesus

A bit of middle ground is required: many people would find that some fella telling everyone how he does his cookery videos on his phone in the kitchen is (a) boring (b) not going to save you hundreds of euro a year in electricity or energy, or make for a nicer house. So hard to please everyone, I know. Personally, on a house programme, I love to see attractive, beautiful, asthetically pleasing, different, breaking the mould architecture that is also safe, practical, value for money with cutting edge technology and is also environmentally friendly and "cheap to run". There are always compromises and trade offs. Such is life. Interesting to see the processes, the people involved, the firms trying to get a plug in too.

Lots of us are living in houses built 30 or 40 or 50 years ago and wondering how to make them warmer / better / open to ideas.

Room to Improve, while not perfect, is a good attempt. And not much else to watch on TV anyway.