Well, things have moved on apace since our first meeting but first things first;
For anyone who thought I was joking about the Love Bird I am enclosing a photo, isn’t it a most beautiful and exotic creature? Unfortunately, her partner has flown away and she is heartbroken. Kathleen and her husband, Derek are now in the process of finding her a new man! I wonder would internet dating work?!!!
Kathleen and Derek have been planning this build for over four years. When they first bought the site and got financial approval they were renting a house in Bray. They decided to move onto the site to both save money and watch their dream grow. They bought a mobile home to move into. However, the fates, (or Wicklow Planning!) were against them. It took four attempts at different designs before they got approval to build. At this point, the recession had hit big time and things had changed dramatically again! This, now served them well as the cost of building has been significantly reduced. However, when Kathleeen realised that it would be quite some time before they would be moving into their completed home, they decided that a mobile home would not meet their needs long term. The picture below is of their current abode! This ingenious building is made up of both the mobile home and a forty foot container, combined with a fabulous greenhouse! Everything in this house is recycled from film sets! It is THE most personalised, bespoke home I’ve ever seen. They have a wood-burning stove, a compost toilet, fitted kitchen with dishwasher, satellite tv and high speed broadband. Remember the winter just gone?!! Just as well they insulated!
So, back to work….Julieanne had her measurements and photos and a good idea of what Kathleen wanted in terms of curtains, couches and colours! They scheduled another meeting for the following week. We stayed on to discuss some of the fitted furniture elements. Kathleen asked us to have a look at her kitchen plans and explained that she thought her budget was probably too tight for Oakline.
Kathleen’s plan had been to order her kitchen that afternoon but she realised that the advice given in the ‘ Grab and Go ‘ kitchen centre she was dealing with may have been tilted more to their product than her wishes. It was obvious that she needed something just a little more tailored, for instance, extraction was an issue which needed resolution. How far would the ducting have to travel and would that reduce the effectiveness? I felt that maybe the design could be tweaked a little to give as much storage without filling every single bit of wall space and therefore giving a cleaner look. We discussed some options and I went away to see what we could do. The timing was tight but I sent through plans to Kathleen that evening.
We had streamlined the design to open up the area around the window. There are beautiful views and I wanted them to be the focus. Along the hob wall we had changed all the base units to be drawers; three sets of wide drawers which would hold all the pots and pans as well as plate and food storage. Three wide cutlery inserts would take care of any size canteen and all the accessories you could ever use.
Kathleen had said she would prefer not to have a flyover shelf over the extractor and so we took that out and agreed that we could build the wall cabinets around the ducting and make it blend in with the wall colour so as to keep that light, open feeling throughout. This also meant the ducting would go in a straight line from the extractor to the hole provided. With two large larder units either side of the fridge and a full height fitted bin under the sink, Kathleen had all the storage she wanted with a clean, crisp design to match.
At 9am the next day, we met again on site and Kathleen agreed to give Oakline the order. We won’t get into financials but I think Kathleen would say she was surprised at how competitive we were. Kathleen and I spent quite some time together going through the finer details of the kitchen. How would we finish off the top of the units as they would be seen from the minstrels gallery? Would every exposed gable match the doors? We arranged to meet again a week later at Kitchen Accessories Ltd, where we went through all the different extractors and their decibel levels and extraction rates per sqm as well as looking at sinks and taps. (Kathleen had already bought the rest of her appliances before meeting us, including an amazing Liebherr Fridge/Freezer).
So everything set in stone, the kitchen went into production. We then turned our attention to bedrooms…..
Clayre Roche
