WITH THE LATEST season of Room to Improve having come to an end in recent weeks, we can already feel the Bannon-withdrawals kicking in.
But while he may not be on our TV screens right now, he was good enough to take to the airwaves over the weekend, and provide us with those sweet, sweet design tips we didn’t even know we cared about.
So, if Dermot has taught us anything over the last 11 years, it’s that he’s mad for an open plan and he has absolutely no time for feature walls.
But did you know how invested he is in the nation’s storage needs?
Oh sure, he may have made mention of it over the course of some episodes, but it goes deeper than a cursory acknowledgement, lads.
Speaking to Marian Finucane on RTE Radio 1 on Saturday, the architect outlined the biggest issue with the design of Irish houses, and he won’t rest until we all give it the attention it needs.
Storage is a massive thing in Ireland. We don’t have enough of it.
True, but we do have our ridiculously chic feature wall, Derm.
And apparently, it’s that thought process that got us into this mess – placing precedence on the unnecessary without factoring in the functional.
We have the good dining room and the good sitting room that we think we need but nowhere to put stuff like the schoolbags, gym gear, bikes.
Using a Co Sligo family, who were mad for surfing, as an example, Dermot encouraged them to consider the various elements of their day to day life in order to properly plan the design of their home.
You can’t leave [wetsuits] on the back of the dining room chairs. Have an area like a wet room with rails to hang them up.
If the wet room can have a feature wall, we’re in.
