“The sights and the views are the special part,” she says. Nicola is determined to open up the property to its surroundings. It’s a rabbit warren, typical of its time - extended, and extended multiple times.”Įnter Nicola Ryan and Grainne Dunne of Studio Red Architects. “The architect will be up against it from the off. “There's lots of rooms and lots of doors and lots of corridors it’s like two bungalows stuck together,” says Hugh. Hugh describes the bungalow as “a warren”.
“We bought it to renovate it before we moved in but that never happened,” says Davin.
So, what made them choose this particular house? “The kitchen and living spaces don’t work for us as a family, they were fine when it was just the two of us, as a couple, but as time has moved on, we need the spaces to be more functional now,” says Niki at the outset. They had always planned to renovate the sprawling property (290sq m, over 3,000sq ft, without counting the attic). “It made sense to come to Galway, we would never have been able to afford a house in Dublin,” says Niki. He and respiratory specialist nurse Niki, from Naas, Co Kildare, live in the bungalow with their two-year-old son Jasper. “The previous family was here for 50 years and brought up all their kids here and now we are doing the same,” says Dublin native Davin, a furniture design lecturer. Their renovation budget was initially around €225k but during the design and build that figure had to stretch to over €330k, and the final bill looks like it will be around €350k, they add, concluding it will be worth it for what Niki describes as “a really special home”. The couple purchased their property for €150k and they saved for over a decade to renovate it so that it would be more suitable for family living. We see the highs and the lows, the facts and figures - yet we are also treated to a realistic, yet pleasing ending, complete with storybook-satisfactory visuals. The transformation of Niki and Davin’s Connemara residence unfolds, in pandemic times, in the first programme on the RTÉ One series. Houses like this may have served a purpose when they appeared on the Irish landscape in that decade, but as architect Hugh Wallace says in episode one of My Bungalow Bliss, they “are in desperate need of reinvention”. Five years ago, Niki and Davin bought a bungalow - a property that in turn was once plucked straight from the pages of a 1970s pattern book.