From a cow shed to a romantic Swarovski crystal-chandeliered love nest in the Wicklow mountains, less than an hour from the city.
Want to treat the love of your life to a grand gesture or celebrate a big milestone anniversary or birthday?
Crab Lane Studios offers an escape from the city where you can spend some romantic time with the love of your life.
The cut stone barn has vaulted ceilings, hung with Swarovski crystal chandeliers, and there’s a mezzanine bedroom with a slipper bath, big enough to share.
The barn belongs to interiors stylist Penny Crawford Collins, whose work has been published in many of the UK and Irish design bibles.
It embodies her love of rustic, raw spaces and being able to see things differently.
But it didn’t always look and feel like this, she says, laughing. When they first bought it there were slates missing from the roof.
“Inside it was knee-deep in cow dung. We had to clear out the cattle runs and clean everything down,” she recalls.
The setting now has a Viking Valhalla vibe with furs draped across seats and sofas.
Situated between Rathwood and Shillelagh, the barn forms part of a farmhouse property on a couple of acres that she and her composer husband purchased years ago, when they moved from London to the Wicklow hills.
“I always had a vision of a big farmhouse with kids sitting around a big kitchen table, making cakes,” she says.
And she’s manifested it in the most stylish way.
There are several outhouses on the land, but it was the granite barn that made Penny fall in love with the property.
The building was first converted into a music studio, which explains the name that her husband used.
But they recently converted it into a romantic getaway for couples.
Penny wanted to keep the long house’s bare stone walls, and so the copper pipework of the plumbing is exposed.
She insulated the floor and ceiling. Cast iron radiators, which were obtained from a neighbour in return for colour advice, a barter system, warm the walls.
“They retain the heat so that it remains warm a cosy no matter what the weather does,” she explains.
The poured concrete floor, set atop a heavily insulated core, features a high sheen varnish, Temafloor 25 from Paint Hub in Carlow, which is hard-wearing and that she scattered with glitter.
“It always looks shiny.”
Penny sourced the uPVC sliding doors from PVC Mike in Carlow, while the windows are actually PVC panels that have been cut to size and installed on the horizontal rather than the vertical.
All have been primed and then painted in a gloss paint finish.
“I didn’t want a fitted kitchen,” she says, explaining the simple set-up that features stainless steel units bought from Equip, a restaurant supply shop in Hacketstown.
The designer has opted for a stainless steel worktop and had a local welder cut openings in it for the hob and sink. The latter has a gooseneck tap. You can hang utensils, rustic style, from the Ikea unit overhead.
The bed is on a mezzanine level open to the room. The shutter on the window is original to the property, which was constructed in 1917.
In addition to the indoor bathroom, complete with aforementioned slipper bath, there is an outdoor washroom with a galvanised steel sink and a wet-room shower screened from the rest of the room by a sheet of galvanised metal.
The beauty of this getaway is that while it is completely remote, there is a pub within five minutes on foot.
“You can walk there and stagger back,” Penny says.
Many lovebirds have holed up there for a night or a weekend.
“So far, we’ve had three proposals, several newlyweds, either for the first or last night of their honeymoon, as well as those celebrating big events.”
Prices start from €225 per night. There is no minimum stay, and it is available on platforms Airbnb.com, Booking.com and also on Crablanestudios.ie
