Brushing up from the builder’s blueprint

JUDGING what a house will be like when looking at it on the plans is challenge enough. So, imagine the nerves when deciding to radically alter the builders’ blueprint from the outset.

That’s the risk Mary Sheehan took when she relocated from an old period Co Wicklow home to a brand new Cork house - and just look how it has paid off.

With her family reared, Mary was keen to buy, and for the long-term, into a good residential suburb with services to hand. She liked the location and features of the houses in Maryborough Woods, a large new house development in Douglas, which, when complete, will have its own range of shops and amenities a half a mile from the booming suburban village.

But, she just didn’t need the three bedrooms the house had in its planned layout.

So she swiftly decided to cut back the three bedrooms to two, and to go for one very large main bedroom across the full width of the house, and to put in a second ensuite bedroom across the back.

She also changed things like the chimney size to match the large white marble fireplace she has selected - a sort of chimney breast enlargement - and then she drafted in the assistance of paints effects specialist Geraldine O’Riordan of Hand Painted Interiors.

With Geraldine’s skilled eye, unerring handiwork, flair and knowledge of fabrics, they rapidly transformed what was a standard-offering house into something a bit more bespoke and unique, tailored to Mary’s lifestyle and furnishings.

But, even to say the house was laid out to accommodate her furniture isn’t strictly accurate: Mary turned pupil, doing a paints effects course with teacher Geraldine a few months previously, and she herself decided to take up the brushes, giving a quality once-over lick of colour to dated bits of dark mahogany furniture to brighten up her new space.

Artist Geraldine’s handiwork is everywhere on the walls (she works with her sister Miriam in the business) and she has used a range of effects, from painted block to subtle colour washes and marbling, as well as trompe l’oeuil and murals, depicting warm clime’d Italian scenes.

The house has a bright feel throughout, thanks to Geraldine’s light palette of colours: check out her deft painted cream and gold stripes in the hall, or the umber hues of the marbling. Solid maple is used throughout for floors, the kitchen units are a pale cream with maple tops, and rooms flow easily from one to another thanks to a lack of door saddles.

Having convinced Joan O’Flynn of builders O’Brien and O’Flynn that she wasn’t crazy reducing the bedroom tally from three to two, Mary continued on her merry way with changes to facilitate her planned interior blend of old and new. Thus, she upped the standard builders’ specifications further, putting in an oak stairs and oak doors, and bathrooms also zoomed up the sanitary ware scale in quality terms.

Her own bedroom’s ensuite bathroom is separated from the room area by an open archway and is a world away from the usual shoulder-pinching narrow ensuite. It has a curved shower tray, and wipe-clean pvc wall panels, much easier to clean than tiling and grouting. Her plan is to fashion a folding screen rather than putting in a doorway.

Geraldine O’Riordan painted a trompe l’oeuil backdrop to the lusciously covered bed and its rich red cover, with swags and heraldic motifs on the wall, while in the ensuite there’s a cheery mural of a Mediterranean window and view beyond.

The guest bedroom is done in Swedish style, with twin beds jostling cheek by cheek, knitted together temporarily by a plumply stuffed duck down duvet made by Mary. The painted pine beds pickup details from the cool blue and white wall panels and their berry motif, which is also picked up on the blinds fabric. Geraldine sourced the fabrics and oversaw the making of all the curtain.

Living room furniture is top-drawer stuff, from Finline in Portlaoise, and the highly-laquered and extendable kitchen table and chairs came from Italy - and should feel right at home next to the Italian scene with cypress trees depicted on the adjoining wall.

The recently finished job is as much, as Mary had hoped for, and her gardens have just come right as well to finish the outside to practically the same standards as the inside.

Not only is Mary impressed with it, but the developers O’Brien and O’Flynn are too - they have just commissioned her to do the interior design on their next apartment scheme across the city’s suburb, and she has just formed her own company, Imagine Interiors. Clearly the pupil has learned well, and rapidly, from her teacher.