This blog was originally started to track our progress as we regenerated a derelict Victorian house in Dublin. We turned an old crumbling ruin in to our dream house! If you wish to read through the trials and tribulations of the house build it is best to start at the oldest blog post and read in date order. The blog then evolved in to being all about my life in Dublin, Ireland and then life in Malaga, Spain with artist "PIGSY" and now back in Dublin
I hope you enjoy reading it!
We are expecting cold weather here in Ireland, with the arrival of what is being called an "arctic snap". For the past few days it has been fairly windy and stormy, and cycling home from work yesterday evening was one of the worst - no rain, but bitterly cold. Luckily its a short 10 min cycle from the train station.
When I did eventually get home and got in and got warm, I set about making dinner of Keto pizza. As per usual for this time of year, I am back on low carb along with Intermittent Fasting. The IF is working really well and to be honest I don't miss breakfast or lunch and generally only eat in the evening time.
The pizza turned out great - I covered the top with cheese but be assured, it is loaded with pepperoni under all of that cheese. If you want to make Keto Pizza the recipe is linked here on my blog.
As well as making the pizza I filled bowls full of slow cooker bone broth and popped them in the freezer when cooled. Again with the cold weather, I will be glad of the broth, over the next few days and will probably make some hearty soups with the bone broth as a base.
After dinner, I watched possibly the last of the Hallmark Christmas movies until next Christmas. It was called "Haul out the Holly" and in fairness it was funny and gave me a good giggle in parts. On Friday I noticed a tree still up and lit in the neighbourhood which was nice to see. So nice that I took a pic!
I'm sad to see the end of Christmas really and thinking about it as I was prepping this blog, got me thinking that I really didn't listen to enough Christmas songs over the season.
So I pulled up The Pogues on Youtube and had a listen to "Fairytale in New York". This of course took me down a youtube rabbit hole. After seeing Matt Dillon in the opening scenes, I then went on to look at him and Annabella Sciorra in Mr Wonderful and then went and looked at her in the Sopranos.......and so on - that's what happens with youtube, isn't it?!
Anyway here's Fairytale in New York for you to enjoy now!
Visited the house today with my sister. We were both pleasantly surprised by what stage it is at. The steel cladding looks really well on the external walls of the new extension to the back of the house.
This property came available for purchase a year ago. It had to go through some legal stuff before a sale could go through. The sellers (Ciaran's Dad & Uncle) were kind enough to let us to apply for planning permissions to totally renovate and develop this property into a bespoke dwelling that hit our brief and the way we live. Luckily for me, my husband Ciaran is a partner in ODKM Architects and Designers, and has been listening to my thoughts and views on design for the last 15 years so the brief was already known to him!!!! Obviously he has also got a strong philosophy on how we live and how his designs for this house can have an impact on our lifestyle.
Acquiring Planning Permission in Ireland can be an arduous process especially with a Victorian Property located in an area of architectural interest. After spending months designing what he thought was the perfect solution for the house Ciaran decided, after doing 3D model walk throughs of the initial design, to bin this plan and go back to the drawing board. When I asked him why, he said thatwhen he saw the design in 3D form he realized that his design interfered with the fabric of the building and it was not the correct thing to do. He needed to go back to the sketch pad and pay more respect to the history of the building.
After another couple of months and many late nights in the Studio, Ciaran lodged pre-planning drawings with the planners and discussed with same and from there he lodged full planning permission application. Planning decisions normally take 8 weeks and an early decisions is very unusual and virtually unheard of. Amazingly the planners came back 2 weeks early with a positive answer!
Success!!! We had notification of a grant of permission.
Luckily enough there were no observations (no issues raised by 3rd parties) on the application so it was a waiting game for the final legal planning documents to be issued which we received last week.
