WATCH: Doing it for themselves — meet the people doing up derelict homes
Jack Shelly renovated his grandfather’s 200-year-old house in Mullinahone, Co Tipperary. The house, which they started work on over a year ago, is now 95% finished.
For many young people across the country, getting on the property ladder is a struggle.
High rents and unaffordable mortgages have left many living at home, long term, with few other options.
But Jack Shelly, 26, from Mullinahone in Tipperary, took a different approach to the problem.
Not far from his parents' home sat his grandfather’s 200-year-old house, which had been derelict for about 10 years.
With some hard graft, Jack, and his father, have returned their ancestral home back into a house to be proud of.
“It had been sitting there, so we just started doing it up,” said Jack, who works as a recruitment consultant.
He explained that the hardest part of the job wasn’t the physical labour, but actually learning the crafts needed as he worked.
“I wouldn't have massive experience so I had to learn as I went. Every job I did was slow because there was a lot of tinkering and figuring it out.”
The house, which they started work on over a year ago, is now 95% finished, he explained.
He says they saved a lot of costs by doing as much work as possible himself, with his father.
“All the donkey work really. Digging the holes for the pipes, any of the paintings, tearing holes and anything else we could do, really.
“Materials wise, the price has rocketed now, but we would have bought most of what we needed before so that certainly helped. The fact it took me so long also helped. I was buying as I was working away, so there was no massive cost at once,” he added.
The end result has not only left Jack with a beautiful home but unexpectedly, internet fame.
Taking to TikTik to show his work renovating the property, Jack, who was new to the platform at the time, amassed more than 380,000 followers, and one video has been watched over 3,000,000 times.
Jack says that for some young people, renovating old derelict properties could be an option for getting on the property ladder.
“I have a good few friends who have houses, whether they came from the grandparents or whatnot, and the houses are sitting there derelict. I think people would surprise themselves with how capable they are once they get started,” Jack said.
When Barry Nolan purchased a small, derelict property on the east Cork coast in 2003, many thought him mad.
But when you look at the house, which the Cork native, now living in Boston, has affectionally nicknamed Redhead, it’s clear to see what he had in mind.
The old property, situated in Ballymacoda, stood as a cottage and a barn and was in poor condition when Barry first took ownership.
“People thought I was crazy when I first bought that site,” he said.
The house, built in the 1930s, was constructed with old, traditional techniques, which meant a rebuild was needed, rather than renovations.
One of these techniques was the use of sand, taken from local beaches, in the mortar. This, according to Barry, caused the walls to decay over a number of years, due to the salt found in the sand.
This left Barry with no option but to essentially start from scratch, but he added he was impressed with how easy it was to work with Cork County Council officials regarding the build.
“One of their particular requests was that I keep the style of the red roof of the barn that was originally there. So, as you can see, that's a brand new structure, and it has a fabulous corrugated-coated, red barn-style roof.”
The property, which cost about €260,000 in 2003, came with almost seven acres of oceanfront land, facing the Celtic Sea.
Altogether, Barry believes he spent about €450,000 on the site and works.
He says the planning was the easier part, with securing financing, just as the Celtic Tiger collapsed, more complex.
However, he eventually worked this out, and the actual work, Barry says, was made easy by having the right people on board.
“I hired some excellent people. Jamie O’Dwyer was the contractor and he along with my architect, Kevin Smyth, did a fabulous job. I am thrilled and everybody is thrilled once they saw the final outcome. The guys did an amazing job.”
For Seán Greif and his fiancée Héléna, the chance to restore an old property in Bray brought with it a multitude of bonuses. Instead of a generic home, they got one with history — 170 years of history to be exact.
Work on the property is still ongoing, with the couple having broken ground in August, 2019.
The house itself cost them just over €300,000, which they believe is a fair price for the location.
It also allowed them to live in their desired location, where there is a dearth of available properties.
“The site we found had more to offer. It had a larger garden. It was a unique house, it wasn't a turnkey new build. We had just come from apartments that were essentially carbon copies,” Seán said.
“This one just had something different. And the potential of what it could be was just better than the other options we had,” he added.
Describing the process of developing the property, Seán says it certainly has had its hurdles.
“It's challenging because we'd be motivated from an environmental perspective. We wanted to go down the road of restoring the property using all sustainable materials,” he explained.
Seán, who runs moontour.ie, an Irish Language Adventure Centre, says he wants the house to keep it in touch with its history.
“It is a 170-year-old cottage. I think if you buy a house of that age, then you almost have a responsibility not to start ripping things out and throwing them away.
“If something has been around for 170 years, I don't want to be the one to put it into a skip.”
The build was helped, Seán says, by having the right people on board — and described the overall process as incredibly rewarding.
“A lot of it was finding the right knowledge and the right advice. We had an engineer who was specialised in restorations. So the right tool for the job, the right person for the job.”
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