We never in our wildest dreams thought we’d win
That’s the modest admission from the owners of the Home Of The Year, whose modern transformation of a 1920s terraced house in Dublin won over the judges and viewers
AT the start of Tuesday night’s final of Home Of The Year, Shane Murray joked that his partner Marty Campbell desperately wanted to get to the final.
‘Marty is very competitive so he was devastated at the idea that we wouldn’t get through to the final,’ teased Shane.
‘Oh stop, no,’ Marty replied, with no great conviction.
They were interviewed, along with the other six finalists in contention, as they entered the lavish Palmerstown Estate in Co Kildare for the show’s climax.
While his partner teased him and Marty demurred, it was clear among all the interviewees that it mattered to them.
‘Well that’s the thing,’ Marty laughs the following morning. ‘At the end of the day, it is a competition,’
The nation had watched on as the home he and Shane transformed from a dilapidated 1920s-built terrace house in Dublin into a beautiful modern home, was judged the winner of the series.
Their emergence as winners has been well received. It’s easy to see the effort and expenditure involved in turning a house that hadn’t been lived in for a number of years before they bought it two years ago, into a cool, sophisticated modern home, where every inch of precious space has been wisely used.
It’s even more of an achievement as they didn’t employ either an architect or a builder in making their dream home real.
The entire project is, indirectly, a consequence of the Covid pandemic, as they had savings which were supposed to pay for their wedding in 2020. That was delayed because of a succession of lockdowns, so they put their nest egg to a different use — one that viewers of the RTÉ show got to enjoy. ‘We were due to get married in 2020, but Covid put a stop to that,’ Marty recalls. ‘We moved it out to 2021, but there was still restrictions. So we decided, let’s postpone it. The backdrop was us looking to buy our first home, so that became our priority. ‘We’re very happy. Our relationship really stood the test of time, and of buying and renovating our first home,’ he says with a smile. Marty works for a hotel group managing a cluster of hotels in Dublin, while Shane is a baker with his own wholesale business, Mud Bakery. They have been together since 2015, and spent years renting in the increasingly constricted Dublin market. With housing an issue of acute concern all over the country, Marty says that realisation wasn’t lost on the couple as they negotiated their Home Of The Year adventure. ‘We had been renting in Dublin city centre for the guts of eight years,’ he recalls. ‘We had been saving during that time for our wedding, which didn’t happen, so we had a budget there. We said, “Listen, let’s use it for our home. Let’s get on the property ladder.” Rent was going up, up, up, and we didn’t see that being a viable option for us long-term. We worked hard, saved and we found ourselves in a really lucky position.
‘We appreciate it’s tough at the minute, and not everybody is going to be as lucky as we are, to buy our first home in the location we wanted. That was huge for us, to be able to say, that’s the area we want to live in, and find a home. It’s not lost on us that it’s tough out there economically at the moment.’
That opportunity to buy close to where they had been renting was enormously important to them.
‘It stemmed from the home,’ he says of the possibilities that flowered once they got their hands on the keys. The fact that Shane had studied interior design was critical to their ambitions, too.
‘When we were able to go and look at buying our first home, we were living in the local area, renting there for some time,’ says Marty. ‘We loved the area and when we saw this house, we decided this was for us. We didn’t look at any other home.
‘We went in and put an offer in, and we were lucky enough to go sale agreed. We had some time then to really think about the home and how it would work for us. We got the keys in August 2022.
‘The home was in a state of disrepair, it really was. It hadn’t been lived in for a few years.
‘It was damp, and there was a lot of work getting the home into a liveable condition, so we spent about three months doing the bulk of the work, really, to get it into that condition.
‘We moved in then in November of that year, but we had probably only about 25 per cent of the work done. We had a bedroom and a bit of a bathroom, and a shell of a kitchen. We spent the winter doing the home up, and then gradually
‘We started to put our personalities into the design’
over the course of 2023, we renovated room by room. ‘Being such a small space — it’s a two-up, two-down terraced house — it was all about the location for us. But it was Shane’s idea, his design and his concept, of how we would make the ground floor work for us, and then obviously after that the upper floor. ‘Then we started to put our personalities in there, our love for hotels, our love for travel, our love for that kind of dark, broody colour scheme that you see throughout the home as well. That was really where it all started to come together for us.’
Achieving what they did largely through their own labours, with help from family, is remarkable but also, in a construction sector in which costs have exploded due to inflation and the war in Ukraine, it was a major boon to their plans.
The startling rise in the price of building materials that has waylaid the plans of so many home owners did not have such a big impact on their plans.
‘Because we were doing the bulk of the DIY ourselves, we took our time,’ says Marty. ‘Once we had some of the rooms in a liveable condition, we were in no real hurry then. We did it with the finances we had and if something wasn’t financially available to us in a certain time, we just waited for it.
‘It really helped our budget by doing a lot of the work. Shane’s dad did a lot of the labour for us, which was a huge cost saving. Then Shane himself did the design. We didn’t hire an architect or a construction company or an interior designer — it was all very much ourselves, working away with family members supporting us as well.’
They were living in the house less than a year when they entered Home Of The Year. The preceding months were a blizzard of hard work, tailoring their plans to suit their budgets and time, and slowly inching towards realising the dream that absorbs families everywhere.
Both men came across as modest and understated on the show, but it was nonetheless an indication of the confidence in their work that they decided to enter the house into the country’s most famous homes show.
‘It all came together for the show,’ says Marty. ‘There is no better deadline to get the home finished than a film crew coming in. We were up until the wee hours getting it ready with the last few touches and the painting and the finishing. To be fair, it’s still an ongoing process. We still have a bit of work to do ourselves. I think it’ll be one of those projects that just keeps going.’
Every homeowner will recognise that truth, but very few have the sort of home that wows the judges on a hit TV show.
The couple may have joked about their expectations on the final show, but Marty is adamant that they didn’t have any — entering was a thrill and then it took on its own momentum.
‘We knew what we were signing up for, but we really had no expectations,’ he says. ‘Just getting on the show for us was real kudos — to say that our design, our interior design, what we had done with our home was good enough to get on the show.
For me that was a win for us. Then to get the reaction from the judges and the scores from the judges, we were over the moon with that. When we got into the final, it was just a celebration. We had zero expectations. We never in our wildest dreams thought we would go on and win the whole thing, so that’s still kind of blown our minds.’
Almost as commendable as their design and renovation skills is their discretion, as they had to keep their win secret for months.
‘We filmed our first episode back in September,’ explains Marty. ‘Then the final was filmed in November, so it’s been about six months of us kind of sitting on this secret. ‘It was tough now, I’m not going to lie, not saying anything, but we kind of put it to the back of our minds then. As the show came on the telly we watched it and it all became very real. It was a great experience, and a great ride to be on that journey as part of the show.’ If the house is going to remain a consuming project for some time yet, their wedding plans are now a priority again too. Their home renovation project saw the pair work together harmoniously in a setting that tests the bonds of many relationships.
‘I think we work really well together as well, as a couple and as a partnership,’ says Marty. ‘His qualities and my qualities blend together, which helped us achieve this project.
‘We do like to push ourselves, to get out of our comfort zones, and going on a show like this is probably a reflection on us as people, that we like to give ourselves an adventure.’
‘There is no better deadline than a film crew coming in’
ALL ten series of Home Of The Year are now streaming on the RTÉ Player