No home help from TV foe Amanda for Hugh
TV judge Wallace says he would end up with house of two halves
TV ARCHITECT Hugh Wallace said that his under-renovation home would end up ‘a house of two halves’ if fellow Home of the Year judge Amanda Bone got involved in the planning.
The pair have vastly different tastes and
‘It’s a challenge: there’s always something better’
their onscreen clashes have become a fixture of recent seasons of the property series, with third judge Sara Cosgrove often playing mediator in disputes.
But Wallace admitted his husband Martin Corbett tends to agree with Bone’s appraisals when Home of the Year airs.
Asked if he had sought out the opinion of his onscreen adversary in renovating their two-up, two-down Dublin house, Wallace answered with an emphatic ‘no’.
‘Martin would love to invite Amanda over and I’ll invite Sara and we’ll have a house of two halves,’ he joked, adding that he’ll really only be ready to invite the judges over ‘when we’re all finished’.
And when he was quizzed on whether his profession and experience mean his input carries more weight at home than that of Corbett, who owns hair salon Origin Hair Company, Wallace replied: ‘You must be joking! Being inside the house is what Martin likes, but that’s great.’
He added that doing up one’s own home is ‘quite a challenge’ as an
architect, as ‘there’s always something better because things are moving so quickly in the industry’.
He originally planned to install black-framed Crittall doors and windows in the house – which the couple hope to have finished by summer – but decided against them because they’re ‘too on trend’.
‘The one thing that I’ve learned is that you have to be very careful about the “on trend” in terms of fashion, because that in itself dates a home so quickly. So you’re better off having the building as your backdrop, and if you want to be in vogue and trendy, do that with the colour scheme and furniture – so at least when you’re no longer on trend you can recycle, upcycle, recover it or whatever.’
One modish feature that will ‘absolutely not’ be appearing in his home off Clanbrassil Street is slatted timber wall panelling.
‘It’s very trendy,’ he said. ‘You’re fierce trendy if you have a lump of that. Usually situated behind the TV screen. It appeared all over the series; it will go out of trend exceptionally quickly. It was something I loved at the beginning, but now I don’t anymore because it’s everywhere.
‘And unfortunately, the quality of some of the timber being used really isn’t good enough.’
More palatable to the TV architect are the ‘amazing paint finishes’ and wallpapers that are currently making a comeback.
‘You can buy a theme – it’s maybe 10 or 12 feet wide by eight feet high. And some of those can be fabulous as a backdrop to your room. So you could have a scene from whatever you want – a forest romance or something – and I think they’re fun in the home, because you can take it down after five years and put something else up.’
The only Home of the Year judge to have been there for all 10 seasons, Wallace said this year’s episodes will have ‘more chit-chats’ between him and fellow architect Bone when they start on Tuesday.
‘Amanda and I just have very different tastes,’ he said. ‘That makes for interesting viewing because neither of these are wrong, neither of us are right. And that’s the great thing about a home. It’s about personal taste – personal style.’
‘We’ve different tastes, neither of us is wrong’
Home of the Year returns this Tuesday at 8.30pm on RTÉ One