Another Move

It is not often that I’m happy to pack my belongings and make a huge change to life. Actually, it has only really happened to me since I made the decision to go travelling for the very first time. All subsequent moves have been forced upon me and I have approached them with as much dignity as a child throwing a tantrum. You can imagine then my absolute delight with my latest move. After endless house viewings, bids, excitement and disappointments, Mr B, Lucille and I, are moving to our very own home.

We knew when we started looking for a house here in Dublin years ago (yes we’ve been looking for years!) that we wanted a house that wasn’t too modern but equally a house that wouldn’t require us having to live in a building site. In the early days, Mr B and I actually were prepared for such a project but that seemed less likely with baby Lucille. We found the very house that fit all our requirements. We got the keys in August and the house has been under renovations since. I spoke on Instagram about why I’m only talking about this now and the sole reason is due to my fear of losing our tenancy while the house was being renovated. The housing crisis here in Dublin has gotten exponentially worse and I couldn’t face being in a position of having nowhere to live.

Our house, built in the late 1930’s, needed what a real estate agent might describe as, ‘some modernisation’. The only benefit of having viewed hundreds (or thereabouts!) of houses prior to this is we became experts in seeing what work needed to be done. We had builders and architects in to confirm our novice analysis and thankfully there was no major structural work, but a complete upgrade of basically everything was required. We have been daydreaming of our own home for such a long time that a lot of our decisions were already made, we just needed someone to do the work for us. Neither Mr B or I are handy enough to take on such a big DIY project and time was not our side so we made the decision to employ a builder to ‘modernise’ our house. We struck gold with Colm O’Rourke from Iona Renovations and Carpentry. His expertise and more importantly, patience, is what made our ideas come to fruition. I have learnt a lot about this process; from mortgage applications (get a broker), to finding tradesmen (personal recommendations are a must!), to never giving up on finding that perfect bathroom tile. We haven’t even moved into the house and I already wish we had done a few things differently (more on that a bit later) but hopefully I won’t have to put those lessons into action for a very long time.

I took many photos along the way, all with such giddiness that I can’t wait to show you what we started with. Be prepared for uncurated, baby Lucille in one hand and phone in the other type photographs. Here is one of many before and after photos, this one of the back of our house. The second photograph was captured by Mr B and honestly I can’t remember why I have such a ‘Oh holy f**k’ expression, as the big hole in the back of the house was all planned. Thank goodness it was!