Room to Improve (v2)

His house really could have been done in one episode. Maybe a 90 minute special if they really wanted to drag it out but two episodes was very much dragging it out, especially so when you consider how little the house itself seemed to actually feature in the show.


For what it's worth, I realise the show is scripted, is obviously a drama, and clearly has a production crew, however, I do think Dermot himself needed to revise what was being put forward for the show. They made him look like a complete moron. He looked like he had no idea what he was doing, and when it came to things like not understanding primary school stuff like glass being reflective at night, he really must have damaged his professional image.

That said, the house itself seemed a fairly standard Dermot Bannon affair. Glass everywhere (although that pane of clear glass at the end of the hall that leads into the kitchen from the front door is an accident waiting to happen!), a horrendous dormer window that in no way suits the aesthetics of the area, a large open plan living space, coupled with the usual 'we're waiting for a decision to be made' storyline.

The house is nice, although I don't understand how the argument was made that having downpipes on the rear of the house was ugly, but having three separate apex rooflines, with one staggered back, wasn't overly-cluttering the design in itself. Kind of works against the simpler downstairs wall of glass, in my opinion (but then; I'm no architect).


Yer one Patricia seems nice, but they managed to make a tit out of her, too. She came in at a price of, I believe, €780k (650k for house, 30k for front garden and 100k for back garden). Even if we ignore that the builders went looking for more money because they were on-site for too long, and that dermot's family spent what looked like a few hours cutting plants and bringing them to the skip, the price quoted at the end was 'around' €530k.

For a quantity surveyor to price a 530k job at 780k (a different of 250k!) makes her look like a bumbling idiot. She's about 30% off and her only job is to price things.


I presume the people featured in the show have some level of creative control, or get to see the episodes before they're completely finalised, so I've no idea what they were thinking.

Also, that gardener fella got far too much TV Time. It was practically his show. As much as I think a garden is an important part of the house layout (albeit I'm the type that prefers clean lines and tidy rather than messy/overgrown), I don't think it warranted anywhere near as much attention as it had gotten on the show.


That said, all my complaining and moaning aside, fair play to him. At the end of the day, I wouldn't begrudge someone a bit of success, and although I know nothing about him except what I see on TV, he seems a relatively friendly and inoffensive chap, so hopefully things will continue well for him and the family.

Addle

Didn’t she say that he ‘shopped around’? The impression I got was that he called in a lot of favours.

Ceist_Beag

Deleted User wrote: »

His house really could have been done in one episode. Maybe a 90 minute special if they really wanted to drag it out but two episodes was very much dragging it out, especially so when you consider how little the house itself seemed to actually feature in the show.


For what it's worth, I realise the show is scripted, is obviously a drama, and clearly has a production crew, however, I do think Dermot himself needed to revise what was being put forward for the show. They made him look like a complete moron. He looked like he had no idea what he was doing, and when it came to things like not understanding primary school stuff like glass being reflective at night, he really must have damaged his professional image.

That said, the house itself seemed a fairly standard Dermot Bannon affair. Glass everywhere (although that pane of clear glass at the end of the hall that leads into the kitchen from the front door is an accident waiting to happen!), a horrendous dormer window that in no way suits the aesthetics of the area, a large open plan living space, coupled with the usual 'we're waiting for a decision to be made' storyline.

The house is nice, although I don't understand how the argument was made that having downpipes on the rear of the house was ugly, but having three separate apex rooflines, with one staggered back, wasn't overly-cluttering the design in itself. Kind of works against the simpler downstairs wall of glass, in my opinion (but then; I'm no architect).


Yer one Patricia seems nice, but they managed to make a tit out of her, too. She came in at a price of, I believe, €780k (650k for house, 30k for front garden and 100k for back garden). Even if we ignore that the builders went looking for more money because they were on-site for too long, and that dermot's family spent what looked like a few hours cutting plants and bringing them to the skip, the price quoted at the end was 'around' €530k.

For a quantity surveyor to price a 530k job at 780k (a different of 250k!) makes her look like a bumbling idiot. She's about 30% off and her only job is to price things.


I presume the people featured in the show have some level of creative control, or get to see the episodes before they're completely finalised, so I've no idea what they were thinking.

Also, that gardener fella got far too much TV Time. It was practically his show. As much as I think a garden is an important part of the house layout (albeit I'm the type that prefers clean lines and tidy rather than messy/overgrown), I don't think it warranted anywhere near as much attention as it had gotten on the show.


That said, all my complaining and moaning aside, fair play to him. At the end of the day, I wouldn't begrudge someone a bit of success, and although I know nothing about him except what I see on TV, he seems a relatively friendly and inoffensive chap, so hopefully things will continue well for him and the family.

+1 to all of that. I really think Dermot comes off quite badly as a professional in all of this. You wouldn't expect a student architect to make some of the mistakes he made or to be quite as shoddy as he was made out to be.
In fairness to Patricia, I think her final estimate on the house was €600K and I think it probably wasn't far off that. Dermot mumbled the 530 number at the end of the show but I don't think anyone believes that was the final number. Her estimate on the garden was €130K but the garden delivered was a pale imitation of the original design by Diarmuid Gavin. The steps were lovely though - a marked improvement on the wall put in by Dermot originally!
On the house, yeah downstairs looked really nice although some touches I wouldn't be mad on, like the "stove" alongside the tv and the backsplash on the sink in the kitchen was a bit mad! Personally I like having a window to look out of at the sink, especially as his was (I think) looking out at the garden.
But overall, good luck to them.

iamwhoiam

Yes good luck to them and its their house after all . My one big criticism would be the eye sore of the awful black window yokey to the front . Did anyone like it I wonder ? Its neither in keeping with the house or the area .
Another thing I noticed was how the neighbours back rooms looked very shaded by the extension . I would like to know how they felt about it .
Personally speaking if I had 1.5 million I would expect a sea view location and maybe a pool but its not my money he spent !

As for the programme it self , it has jumped the shark and is no longer a programme about ordinary people getting an extension . We saw no bathrooms or anything in Dermots house and no real insight into the cost or spend or sourcing .

Some might enjoy the change of path the show is taking , I prefer the original Room to Improve shows . I definitely won’t be watching the next few with Eva Orsmond anyway !!

HeidiHeidi

That garden was in my eye what DG had proposed/planned - I'm surprised he agreed to that being associated with him to be honest!



A few steps and a big expanse of lawn? Nothing wrong with it (probably a lot more practical for a young sports-mad family than a jungly designer wilderness) and I liked it, but a Diarmuid Gavin spectacular it most certainly was not!


The house inside was amazing - not to my taste but then again it's hard to tell from a telly shot. As others have said, if that's what they actually wanted then more luck to them - it looked like beautiful craftmaship throughout.


I'm also stunned (not in a good way) by the big boxy dormer window at the front - can't believe that got past planning, and can't believe anyone thinks it looks aesthetcally good!


I'm also intensely irritated by the fudging of figures - either don't get involved in money matters at all, or give the audience the respect of using actual figures. They made such a huge deal of budget figures throughout, and then you have Dermot muttering something about €5XX thousand, I forget the actual figure but I believe that as much as I believe in DG's garden.


As for Eva Orsmond - I presume that's not a RTI show? She's up there on my list of the most irritating TV personalities EVER, so as much as I love property programmes I think I'll be giving that one a wide berth.

AndrewJRenko

boggerman1 wrote: »

The dog was the most intelligent of the 3.he kept his mouth shut

You know how they say that dogs grow to look like their owners? Or is it the other way round?

funkey_monkey wrote: »

Is disabled access not required when updating an existing house?

Yes, where 'reasonable' - though enforcement of building regs is very poor, particularly of accessibility issues.

Is the Planning application available on the DCC website?

Millionaire only not wrote: »

They edited out , suddenly there’s the stove nothing about the flue!

He said it was a 'bio ethonol stove, burning rape seed oil' that doesn't need any flue.

Deleted User wrote: »

Yer one Patricia seems nice, but they managed to make a tit out of her, too. She came in at a price of, I believe, €780k (650k for house, 30k for front garden and 100k for back garden). Even if we ignore that the builders went looking for more money because they were on-site for too long, and that dermot's family spent what looked like a few hours cutting plants and bringing them to the skip, the price quoted at the end was 'around' €530k.

For a quantity surveyor to price a 530k job at 780k (a different of 250k!) makes her look like a bumbling idiot. She's about 30% off and her only job is to price things.

Funny how it was Dermot that gave the €530k cost at the end, and not Patricia. Every other episode had the QS doing a final wrap up on costs. Maybe Patricia has some ethical objection to lying on camera?

Penn

I think they mentioned a few times during the episode that things had been taken out of the contract during tender, so even though the initial design & spec came in approx €600k, things were then taken out, and they mentioned that Dermot "shopped round" (aka. "I'm famous and this'll be on RTE so gimme stuff for cheaper"), so I can see how there could have been a decent enough reduction from the initial cost.

However, between the project overrun and stuff added back in, I would have thought it'd still come in closer to €600k. Maybe there's stuff he's counting as separate to the project/contract cost, but that's a bit misleading.

Either way, it didn't look particularly wonderful at the end. It was alright, but nothing great/spectacular. And the whole thing about having his family help with the garden was clearly just done on purpose to bring his family/personal story into it. More fakery for the sake of it.

Grats

Throw in architects fees - Dermot's, his male and female friends fees, his Oxford friend and so on - Diarmuid Gavin's fees, Patricia's fees and various other people he called on, the final cost would be much higher than mentioned. The average client most certainly could not contemplate running up such costs.

LirW

To everyone saying it doesn't fit the area: just in the immediate area a good few houses did huge extension projects that seem a bit tacked on with similar windows.

meeeeh

I liked the house. I'm unsure about the front window, at one level it's interesting but in another a bit too intrusive. I like the back of the house a lot, I like the apex ceilings, they are very nicely done. I would prefer kitchen looking out but but that's personal preference, kitchen itself is very nice.

Bioethanol fire was interesting because we were looking into one of those. We messed chimney design too, although in his case that could be story narrative. They went for very energy efficient house and it's quite possible wood burning stove was never planned.

micks_address

Yeah im pretty sure he could go to suppliers and say things like..hmm ill use you as my preferred supplier for all jobs going forward and they'd say hmm... have this stuff for cost..

actually thought there was going to be a 3rd episode.. it went from chaos to all done in 2 minutes.. the kids dropping the stone in the kitchen was funny... drop it anywhere you want as long as you put it where i tell you...

diarmuid gavins place looks super.. you could probably have that for the same price as the bannons house..

i assume he paid 500k for the house and put in another 550k so its at least a 1 million spend?

I know Drumcondra is nice but id be tempted to get out of the town a bit and get more for the money. The garden is huge though.. id say the neigbours must feel severally underwhelming next to is house.. His extension and roof line must cut off a lot of their light?

Addle wrote: »

Didn’t she say that he ‘shopped around’? The impression I got was that he called in a lot of favours.

Mantis Toboggan

micks_address wrote: »

Yeah im pretty sure he could go to suppliers and say things like..hmm ill use you as my preferred supplier for all jobs going forward and they'd say hmm... have this stuff for cost..

actually thought there was going to be a 3rd episode.. it went from chaos to all done in 2 minutes.. the kids dropping the stone in the kitchen was funny... drop it anywhere you want as long as you put it where i tell you...

diarmuid gavins place looks super.. you could probably have that for the same price as the bannons house..

i assume he paid 500k for the house and put in another 550k so its at least a 1 million spend?

I know Drumcondra is nice but id be tempted to get out of the town a bit and get more for the money. The garden is huge though.. id say the neigbours must feel severally underwhelming next to is house.. His extension and roof line must cut off a lot of their light?

He paid 900K initially for the house and then probably 600K + for the extension and renovation.

I know if I paid that kind of money i'd expect not to be stuck in Drumcondra.

Did we find out if he got the renovation grant?

All these episodes about 90% in go from complete mess to walllah!! Completed. Then all the finer details get lost and it's all happy faces drinking wine in the kitchen and trying to convince each other that it was all worth it.

tommythecat

Mantis Toboggan wrote: »

I know if I paid that kind of money i'd expect not to be stuck in Drumcondra.

In fairness he isn't "stuck" in Drumcondra. It's where he wants to live.

InterestedK

The bioethanol fire that they put in is stunning and really considering one having seen how real the flame is.

Did he say all they need to light the flame is rapeseed oil and a drop of alcohol?!

Addle

Mantis Toboggan wrote: »

Did we find out if he got the renovation grant?

No mention of it, but work was done last year, so he wouldn’t have qualified for it anyways?

NIMAN

It is a real flame

meeeeh

I think he considers this his forever home. I gave no issues in pouring money (if you have it) into the house beyond the value it would achieve on the market. I love the house we built but there is no way we would recoup the money put in the place if selling. I'm positive we would clear the mortgage but when you are building a house you want to spend your life in then I think you should be guided by what you want and not by what it would make on the market. It's a home.

MrMusician18

micks_address wrote: »

Yeah im pretty sure he could go to suppliers and say things like..hmm ill use you as my preferred supplier for all jobs going forward and they'd say hmm... have this stuff for cost..

actually thought there was going to be a 3rd episode.. it went from chaos to all done in 2 minutes.. the kids dropping the stone in the kitchen was funny... drop it anywhere you want as long as you put it where i tell you...

diarmuid gavins place looks super.. you could probably have that for the same price as the bannons house..

i assume he paid 500k for the house and put in another 550k so its at least a 1 million spend?

I know Drumcondra is nice but id be tempted to get out of the town a bit and get more for the money. The garden is huge though.. id say the neigbours must feel severally underwhelming next to is house.. His extension and roof line must cut off a lot of their light?

They cut the shots around DGs house really tight, presumably to make it difficult to identify what part of Wicklow he lives in.

solerina

He had two stoves...the one with no flue was in the open plan kitchen area, the other real stove was in the front of the house...which I presume was connected to the old chimney on the roof....they showed both, just didn’t mention the normal wood burning stove.

seanino

Exactly - it's considered a sought after location especially being so close to city centre and off Griffith Avenue. Theres a house for 1.75m for sale on the same road

tommythecat wrote: »

In fairness he isn't "stuck" in Drumcondra. It's where he wants to live.

NSAman

It doesn’t really matter what “we” think of the house, this is the house that he wanted to build. Some of it is nice for me but the whole program was just confusing and not an architectural program (which is where my interests in this are)

The whole “pulling in favours” I can understand (no matter how rich you are).

What really irritated the hell out of me about all of this was the constant and blatant pushing of Gavin. It is supposed to be a build program and Gavin was pushing himself for more of this episode. If I wanted to watch “who lives in a house like this?”, it would have been fine.

The program never showed any of the construction. It went from a building site to finished in about 30 seconds. The design was overlooked completely (although briefly described in part one).

I agree with many that this didn’t help Bannon as an architect. It made him look incompetent and not on top of his game. Patricia on the other hand looked sheepish in the program compared to normal. The fact Bannon gave the final figure stood out. I still don’t believe the figure (even with Architect discount)

Some things that stood out... Budget he had for garden was much more than the 5K for the shed. The tree ferns put in alone at the back cost a few hundred a piece (especially that size). A garden of 130K is excessive and was very much money over substance, it certainly was not anywhere near that cost, but equally it wasn’t cheap.

I don’t envy him his house, may he enjoy it to the fullest with his family. He seems like a jovial enough chap and enjoys life, but that was not what I wanted to experience, I wanted to experience the build and not a family reunion program.

This could have been so much more, it was more an entertainment program and certainly not something most architects would want to be part of in a professional sense,,,,imho.

Would LOVE to see a program on the house the sisters collaborated on in Kildare, that looked amazing and was well designed.

meeeeh

I very much agree with your assessment. It wasn't great programme. As for the ferns I think OH was looking at something similar somewhere and they were priced in thousands (I can't find anything online that size so I can'treferencethat). There is possibility that some plants and furniture were brought in for the final staging and are not actually his.

joeysoap

Looked a really interesting and well designed house. Wouldn’t mind finding how much that cost to design and build.

The one in Kildare.

Clearly calling in favours included all professional fees. If you had builders on site you think you’d get away with €750 a week?

(3 months delay cost €9,000)

meeeeh

joeysoap wrote: »

Looked a really interesting and well designed house. Wouldn’t mind finding how much that cost to design and build.

The one in Kildare.

Clearly calling in favours included all professional fees. If you had builders on site you think you’d get away with €750 a week?

(3 months delay cost €9,000)

I think that's just the cost of delay not actual labour. He mentioned redoing the garden steps cost 7000 Euro. My guess is builders probably took on some smaller jobs and did not sit on the site for extra 3 months.

Millionaire only not

Mantis Toboggan wrote: »

He paid 900K initially for the house and then probably 600K + for the extension and renovation.

I know if I paid that kind of money i'd expect not to be stuck in Drumcondra.

Did we find out if he got the renovation grant?

All these episodes about 90% in go from complete mess to walllah!! Completed. Then all the finer details get lost and it's all happy faces drinking wine in the kitchen and trying to convince each other that it was all worth it.

In fact Ud have to wonder why should people be entitled to a grant if they can afford 900k plus 600k - hardly makes sense !

iano.p

vicwatson wrote: »

I assume plus the cost of the house?

No house was extra, I think someone else said the house was got for around 600k

Addle

MrMusician18 wrote: »

They cut the shots around DGs house really tight, presumably to make it difficult to identify what part of Wicklow he lives in.

It reminded me of the house in ‘the country practice’ (I think).

tommythecat

iano.p wrote: »

No house was extra, I think someone else said the house was got for around 600k

The house was 900k

SteelyDanJalapeno

I'd say the roof of the outdoor man cave is getting tested today

MrMusician18

Addle wrote: »

It reminded me of the house in ‘the country practice’ (I think).

Simply because of the way they cut it, I was motivated to use all my sleuthing skills to find the house. He has never said in an interview where it is located, beyond saying its in Wicklow, that I could see.

Easy enough to find when you know the right (publicly available) database to look up however.