Urban rustic: A clever architectural addition means a rural Irish home, which featured on Home of the Year, has a stylish shelter to deal with everyday wind and rain through keeping the hair salon perfect. Inside is calm and collected.
Photography: Kelan Molloy
Thanks to the visual world we live in, everyone has a keen eye for architecture and design, as was evidenced in the penultimate episode of this season of Home of the Year.
Roscommon locals, Sarah and Gerard Mulrennan, were still living in the Middle East when they started work on a property that started life as a holiday home, a bolthole to have back in Ireland.
A decision to come home meant it evolved into a large, lofty space for all the family.
The couple had attended the same secondary school but met properly in their 20s, got married in Donegal and moved to Doha, later moving to Dubai.
Their clan grew, and they now have three kids: Sylvie, age 10; Willow, age 7; and Oscar, age 4.
The house is located in Co. Roscommon, but at a point that is on the border with Co Mayo, on the outskirts of Ballyhaunis.
It’s been built on the site of Gerard’s grandaunt’s house, where he would stay as a child. They reused the field stone from her house and surrounding buildings to build the dry-stone walls that surround the property.
That boundary wall also borders the two counties. If you hop over it, you’re in Mayo, says Sarah, who’s from the Maritime County.
They asked local architect Rachel Connaughton, who went to both primary and secondary school with Gerard, to design the property. They had admired an extension she had done in the area.
Based in London for the last 17 years, where she has a practice in London called Flow Works, her design emulates the surrounding farm buildings.
The Lacken stone exterior also helps it fit into its environment and looks like it’s been there for a long time.
Yet it has all the creature comforts of a new build.
The steel carport was a 2024 addition.
“I was against it,” says Sarah.
But then Gerard pointed out that she could get out of the car, with the kids and shopping and not have a single hair out of place.
“I’ve gotten my hair blow-dried once a week for the last 20 years,” she said, admitting that after being away, with all the rain, it did make life easier. “He was right,” she says.
It’s a smart addition that many more living in rural Ireland could do with installing.
The works started in 2019, and the couple managed the project from Dubai, with serious input from both their fathers and wider families, all of whom kept an eye on tradespeople to keep things moving.
The house opens into a hall, where the stairs are covered in micro cement, as is the kitchen part of the double-height open plan space.
Off the hall is a guest w.c that Gerard doesn't like, according to Sarah. It had been painted white, but he started protesting when she painted it a roasted aubergine colour, Brinjal, by Farrow and Ball. It includes a green marble sink, marble tiled floor and a natural light simulator. “He won’t use it. He says it’s too dark.”
The kitchen has lots of interesting but discreetly fitted elements, starting with the cabinetry, which is an urban rustic Sebastian Cox design for deVol.
"It brings a little bit of woodland into the city, with some style," as Sebastian puts it on the company's website. “The whole kitchen is designed to look like it breathes. Together we’ve created something that feels clean, simple and light but is brimming with subtle texture to keep the choice of material at the forefront.”
This design features band-sawn beech treated with coloured dyes that stain the wood, rather than laying paint on top. This allows the texture of the wood to remain visible for a tactile finish that gives off ASMR vibes. The closed cupboard doors have straight beech planks of varying widths with a uniform band-sawn texture, fixed to sliding dovetailed ash braces running behind.
The black steel cantilevered staircase that climbs to the mezzanine library was designed and made by Gerard in his firm, Tully Forge. It also fabricated the main stairs balustrade.
The couple bought the sofa from Fineline Furniture in Galway. It was rust-coloured but had been sun-bleached in the light-filled room. The large glazing frames the pastoral surrounds. “You can see the seasons,” she says.
They brought the sideboard, piano and their big white sleigh bed back from the Middle East.
The principal bedroom is downstairs and features a walk-in wardrobe which is painted in Farrow and Ball’s Setting Plaster, the softest of pale pinks.
These were designed by Gary Harty of GH Bespoke Fitted Furniture, as were the bunk beds in the girls’ room. Oscar's bunks came from MK Furnishings.
Sarah loves that the house works well for them as a family. It is quietly luxurious and is a lovely space to be in.
Outside, larch timber has been painted an agricultural red.
Home of the Year, the series finale will air on Tuesday, 21st April at 7 pm on RTÉ One. Watch it and the rest of the series back on RTÉ Player
