Yes, I too joined the lockdown swimmers in the sea
As Room To Improve returns, Dermot Bannon tells Mary Carr why he relished lockdown – and even took up a hobby
AWE GOT INTO THE SWIMMING WHATSAPPS AND NOW GO FOR DINNERS
fter a pandemicenforced hiatus of two years, Room To Improve returns to our screens tonight, the 13th series in the show’s long-running history. For host Dermot Bannon and indeed his loyal audience of home improvement enthusiasts, its return is a welcome signpost on the road to normality even if, truth be told, Dermot hasn’t exactly been hankering to get back in front of the cameras.
‘Lockdown was hard but Room To Improve wasn’t something I missed,’ says the genial celebrity architect. ‘After churning it out back to back for years as well as working my day job in my architectural practice, I was a bit burnt out. I used the time to listen to podcasts and to read about architecture, basically to educate myself. I felt as if I was a student again, being nourished all day long.
‘I hate to say it because sea swimmers are often such pains in the ass but I also took that up during
Covid. My friend and I swam in Malahide every week.
‘We were like teenagers again, desperate to get in with the regular swimmers and we finally cracked it. We’re in the WhatsApp group now and going for dinners together.’
The new series deals with the usual range of challenges facing homeowners, with tonight’s episode focusing on creating a perfect home in Kilmacud, Dublin, for Marc and Lisa Daly and their three boys, one of whom has autism and needs a sensory room.
By happy synchronicity given the Government plan for generous grants for retrofitting homes, another episode deals with retrofitting the 30-year-old home of emptynesters Jim and Mary Moloney from Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
Dermot is evangelical about deep retrofits, emphasising that all the Room To Improve houses are brought up to an A rating, even though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from watching the show.
‘Trust me no one’s idea of Sunday night entertainment is insulation or heat recovery systems. Audiences want to see more space being created and look at different interior décor and colour schemes,’ says the man who many credit with introducing the ubiquitous kitchen island, not to mention panelling, to Irish households.
‘I suppose the kitchen island trend is my fault really,’ he happily admits, adding that while he has one in his own dream home, a lavishly renovated property on one of Drumcondra’s more desirable streets, he’s not wedded to them.
‘I’m passionate about cooking so they are ideal for me as I hate being left out of the conversation and that’s what would happen if the kitchen was separate and we had people round – you could miss out on a good hour’s chat.’
If a person had €25,000 to spend on their home, should they go for the deep retrofit, or for an acre of granite for the kitchen island of their dreams? ‘Oh the retrofit, no question about it,’ says Dermot. ‘The island is just a worktop… but a retrofit will change your life.
‘Anyone who has bought a second-hand house would be stupid not to avail of the grants.’
The episode where Dermot upgrades a house overlooking the Blessington lakes neatly illustrates his point. When Dermot visited the home a few weeks ago, the heat pump still wasn’t connected, yet the temperatures were balmy inside despite icy weather.
‘They had no heat source all Christmas, except for a plug-in electric heater for a few minutes here and there. But the house felt great, it was like walking into a nice hotel
in Sweden, just a nice ambient temperature. There was none of that overheated feeling you get from central heating.’ An instantly friendly person who talks nineteen to the dozen, Dermot brims with a positivity that is almost infectious but might possibly become annoying in stressful circumstances. He grew up in Malahide where his late father Jim was a horticulturist with Teagasc and his mother Mary was a home economics teacher. He was a quirky child, a bit of a loner who was not really interested in sports but obsessed with maps. He drew maps repeatedly and knew the location of every city and country, until he says, ‘the Berlin wall fell and changed the configuration of Europe’.
His other obsession was rooting through junk in the old boatyard at Malahide marina and bringing it back to life at home. ‘I was always a divil for junk. I’ve always loved well-designed objects. I collect beautiful bottles.’
The Bannon household was a busy one with a big emphasis on crafts and cooking. ‘Lots of people in Malahide worked in the airport so their families got free flights but we got free potatoes because of Dad’s job. Mum made our clothes. She is also a great cook and passed that on to my brother, Podge, who is a chef, and to me. In college, a flatmate asked me to make a sauce for a tuna bake and handed me a packet. I started making a roux, I hadn’t a clue that sauces came in packets or jars.’
From childhood he wanted to work in architecture but his determination was tested early. He had to repeat his Leaving Cert to get the required grades and even then he was refused a place on the two architecture courses in Dublin at the time. Undeterred he moved to the Hull School of Architecture in the UK. It was the making of him. Surrounded by like-minded contemporaries, the loneliness of his teenage years dissolved and he discovered the advantages of city living, being able to cycle everywhere and only ever a few minutes from the nightlife and cultural scene.
‘When I came back to Ireland I bought a fixer-upper in Drumcondra as I wanted to replicate that lifestyle.’
Drumcondra is home now for him and wife Louise, with their three children going to school locally and involved in Na Fianna GAA. He guards their privacy fiercely.
‘They think the television stuff is
YOU SHOULD THINK OF YOUR HOME AS IF IT IS A BLANKET AROUND YOU
mortifying and thankfully none of them want to be architects but I wanted to spare them the burden of being “Dermot Bannon’s son or daughter”.’
He knows what it’s like to live under a parent’s shadow . ‘My father was big on the community council in Malahide and I always helped them out on the Tidy Towns, watering plants on Sundays and picking up rubbish. But no matter what I did I was known as Jim Bannon’s son.’
His other tie to Drumcondra is the dream home he has created there, whose progress from neglected Arts and Crafts home from the 1930s to a Scandi-inspired homage to natural materials and simple shapes was charted over two episodes of Room To Improve. Did he make any expensive mistakes with the renovation?
‘No, it was the third fixer up I did and at that stage you know the pitfalls.’ On house number two on Bantry Road he messed up with the windows, insisting on a design detail that the experts advised against, saying it would cause the windows to warp. Undaunted Dermot pressed ahead with his own ideas, had the windows made up at the joinery shop and installed, only for them to warp as predicted and leak water into the rooms.
He hopes the pandemic has taught people to think more about the feel of their homes and how they work rather than just concentrating on the visuals. ‘Social media has people honing in on a look, doing things that are instagrammable or that can be put on pinterest. But we should focus on how to make a two-dimensional world into a three-dimensional world.
‘We should think of our homes as if they are blankets around us. Our dining tables are not just places to eat but they should be large enough to work on or do a jigsaw. Is the lighting over the table good enough for working and can it be adjusted for a date night? Do we have enough storage? Storage is important but I think we have a problem in this country going overboard with it. We are building huge houses in the countryside so that we can have storage but we are only really hoarding stuff. We have to stop storing and storing and storing.’
What is the biggest mistake people make with their homes? ‘My pet hate is when I see a showroom transported into somebody’s home – but each to their own I suppose. For me homes are like clothes, in that you can express yourself through them. It’s great when people display their hobbies on their walls or use their space ingeniously.
‘You know when you see someone who looks fantastic but you know their clothes are probably from Zara; they just have a way of putting them together, a style that brings the look to the next level and makes it unusual. I love it when people do the same with their homes.’
■ Room To Improve airs tonight at 9.30 on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.