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A stunning home thanks to sheer
determination & TLC!
Fiona Kelly talks to Build & Renovate Words: Emer Kelly
D
ublin born Fiona Kelly has serious ambition. Having purchased a dilapidated Georgian terraced house in the heart of Phibsborough in North Dublin, she had a mammoth project on her hands. With slanted door frames, crooked floors and a tumbling roof, Ms Kelly and her building contractor Philip took on a building that was on the brink of collapse. Once an impressive townhouse for a well-to-do tradesman, Fiona’s house has been witness to the passing fortunes and misfortunes of Dublin over the centuries and was occupied as a tenement home right up to the 1960’s. Initially her time frame for the project was a rather ambitious six months but with problem after problem, the timeline expanded to deal with the challenges the building presented. Rain-soaked and rotten in parts, this building presented big challenges but it
Images: Fiona Kelly
is now a stunning home thanks to sheer determination and a lot of TLC! “The amount of work that went into this house and the whole team that was involved in this project saved the house. I knew the house was in a bad state but it was only when we were in the final stages of stripping everything back that we realised how bad a state the house was in! If I hadn’t come along when I did, the house would have ended up falling down,’’ said Fiona Kelly. “I love architecture and I’ve always had a love of old houses, modern architecture and mid-century along with everything in between. I was familiar with this house and I loved it because it looked like it was a live in property rather than an office and the fact that it had great potential.
