Bringing a cool, light touch to a dark inner city home

Having a garden was top of the agenda for Martin Sweeney and Wallace Costa when they were planning the refurbishment of their end-of-terrace Victorian house in Dublin’s north inner city. Breathing new life into what had been Sweeney’s childhood home and creating a beautiful and personal space that combines both their cultures — Costa is Brazilian — has been a bonus.
The couple, who have been together for more than ten years and are getting married next year, previously lived in the same area in an apartment that had no private outdoor space. “During Covid, we just said we’re never doing this again,” Sweeney says. “We wanted a house with a garden.”
His family home, meanwhile, was empty and run-down and didn’t initially seem like the right option. Sweeney’s father died in 2005 and his mother continued to live there until about ten years ago. It was subsequently rented out. “It began to lose its life,” Sweeney says. “It was a dark house anyway. We had many outbuildings added on to the back that were higgledy-piggledy and really didn’t have any character to them. During Covid, the house was vacated by everybody and nobody ever came back to it. It was in a very bad state of repair.”
Costa, who has just completed a degree in interior architecture and design and played a central role in the interior design elements on this project, saw the potential the first time he visited it. “There was something special about this house,” he says. “There was something that hit me as soon as I walked in. I shared that with Martin and he started reconsidering. We thought, this might be our home in the future.”
The rest of the family were happy for them to take it on, and in 2021 they made the decision to go ahead. They brought in Howard Building Contractors, who, Sweeney says, were “absolutely fantastic” the whole way through, and, on design, engaged Fishamble Architects — partners James Casey and Liam McInerney, and Eóin Murphy, who worked with them at the time.
They were keen to pick an up-and-coming architectural firm in Dublin rather than one of the more established, recognised ones, Sweeney says. “Also, the enthusiasm James showed and the interest they had in the project were key factors in choosing them. Liam, James and Eóin were so available throughout the project, and they really did take on board what Wallace was thinking in terms of design and colour and ideas around the lighting.”
The experience was collaborative and positive, he says. “The overall project was just an amazing team effort by the architects, ourselves, and the builders and the gardener. It was one of those projects that everyone enjoyed being a part of.”
As well as the all-important garden, the pair wanted to transform the inside of the house without losing its character. Structurally, lean-tos and sheds — even the back yard had a Perspex roof — were removed to make the garden. A small extension was added to create a kitchen/diner that spans the width of the back of the house and has a strong connection with the garden: there’s a large window with a seat next to the kitchen space and bifolding doors beside the dining area.
There’s plenty of interest overhead, with exposed timber joists and a rooflight on the kitchen side and a flat section of ceiling on the other. “We feel that people are moving away from that open-plan feeling into more open zones,” McInerney says. “To achieve that, we divided the space with a generous island, we have different ceiling treatments and we also have a different relationship between garden and the internal spaces as well.”
Two reception rooms are also on the ground floor, along with a guest WC under the stairs. Between the front living room and the kitchen/diner is a challenging middle room. Because this room was always going to be a bit darker, it was decided early on that it would be a cosy TV room.
But the architects did take steps to bring natural light into the space. “We dropped a windowsill in the old window to ground level,” Casey says. “We put a 1970s-style hatch through from the kitchen towards the L-shaped contemporary couch. We also added a clerestory light over the flat roof connection.”
Having direct connection between the ground-floor rooms was also important. “We had lived together for many years and we always lived in an apartment,” Costa says. “We always had each other close and knew where one another would be. Because the house was going to be so big for the two of us, I didn’t know how it was going to work. So we wanted the house to be open plan and bright, and visually you could see in all corners.”
Upstairs, the house is the same size as before but has lost a bedroom and an en suite. Two bedrooms at the front have become a huge main with a dedicated dressing area comprising a corridor with wardrobes on either side as you walk in. The couple resisted the temptation to try to squeeze in an en suite.
“We were happy with the main bathroom upstairs on the return, and we just decided to maximise that,” Costa says. “We increased the size and we changed the layout to make better use of the space and it really meets our needs. And then we had a very spacious bedroom.”
There’s another good-sized bedroom at this level and a smaller study/bedroom on the return, where the changes included putting in a circular window — Costa’s idea — and a vaulted ceiling to add volume.
There are nods to the history of the house. When Sweeney’s two brothers came over with their families for a festive dinner last Christmas, a highlight was seeing that a missing spindle in the banisters, knocked out when the three boys were kids, hadn’t been replaced. “James loved that story and, after checking it structurally, decided there was no way we were going to fix it,” Sweeney says. “It was fitting that it stayed the way it was.”
Apart from its lack of en suite, an unusual aspect of the main bedroom is the blue ceiling. “For each of the rooms I picked a different colour,” Costa says. “I wanted them to each have their own character. I picked the colours but I didn’t know how I was going to go with the painting styles. Then I thought, why don’t we paint the ceiling, and we just love it. It’s a great blue as well — it’s so calm.”
For the flooring, they chose a light terrazzo in the kitchen and timber — similar to the original floorboards — for the reception rooms and the bedrooms. In the largely white bathroom, Costa picked floor tiles inspired by the boardwalk of Ipanema beach, in Rio de Janeiro, which was created by Renato Primavera Marinho. These in turn inspired the pair’s landscape designer, Nicola Haines, a partner in Tierney Haines Architects.
“She was having a tour around the house when she spotted the tiles,” Costa says. “She knew the designer and she knew Roberto Burle Marx, who redesigned the Copacabana beach promenade. They used a lot of curves and very bold colours for their landscape designs. She came up with something we would never have thought about, like the possibility of having curves.”
They love how the garden, which was so important to them, has turned out. “We’re in north inner-city Dublin, and yet we have this lovely escape at the back of our house,” Sweeney says.
And they both agree the house and area are wonderful to live in. “It’s home,” Costa says. “It was a long journey, with a lot of ups and downs. It was the right decision and we’re super happy.”
“The garden was the main reason we did this, but we couldn’t have dreamt that the house would be so beautiful as well,” Sweeney says. “Everything just fell into place. We couldn’t be happier.”
Sweeney’s mother died earlier this year and never got to see the transformation. “But she was so thrilled that the house was going to be lived in again and was going to stay in the family. Things like that were very important to her. That was an added lovely touch to the whole thing.”fishamblearchitects.ie