"Home Rescue"
proudly sponsored by IKEA.
#
IKEA,
the wonderful everyday.
#
All around the country
are families who have fallen out of love with their homes.
It is difficult, you'd be ashamed, kind of.
Time to call in the experts.
Architect Roisin Murphy...
... this is the biggest declutter we have ever, ever had.
And builder, Peter Finn.
I promised myself this year,
I'm going to be calm.
They, and their clutter busting crew,
will have just 3 days
and 8,000 Euro to supply all the labour,
material and furniture required
to transform 2 rooms
and rescue one family home.
I knew I had a lot of stuff,
but, when you see it piled up outside,
like oh my God!
Goodbye clutter,
hello makeover,
this is "Home Rescue"
#
In the little village of Borris in South Carlow,
a seemingly idyllic 1930s cottage,
is home to Ann Penfold,
and her twin daughters Becky and Megan.
They're meant to be identical,
I don't think they are.
But a lot of people have problems telling one from the other.
Now, 12 years old,
Becky and Megan didn't have an easy start in life
They were born at 31 weeks,
with twin to twin transfusion syndrome.
Basically Becky stopped growing at 26 weeks,
and the doctors got me to 31 weeks,
and I had to have a section,
because Becky would die, if not.
2.2 and 2.14, they were about that size.
They were absolutely tiny.
The 2 of them were in the ICU unit for 10 weeks.
At one stage we had one in Holles Street,
and we'd one in Wexford.
And we were literally coming from here,
going up to Holles Street, going down to Wexford,
and that was our day, doing a circle like that,
just to see the 2 of them.
When they came out of hospital,
and you knew they were home,
it kind of came tumbling down then.
Oh my God, what's after happening,
what am I going to do?
I've 2 very sick babies,
am I going to be able to get through it?
All these doubts come into your head, I suppose,
and it was tough, very tough for the first 3, 4 years.
The twins have always been the main focus of Ann's life.
This is a loving home,
but, the home itself has been somewhat neglected over the years.
It kind of gradually got left,
because you just didn't have time to do it,
with constant care of the girls,
and the housework got put behind.
And by the time you realised how bad it had gotten,
it was just too much to handle,
and it was easier just to hide it.
Not that it's very well hidden.
The living room was cluttered,
but at least it has some floor space,
unlike the room next door,
where the twins practise their music.
There's not much harmony in here.
A sea of junk rising up against the permanently closed double doors to the living room.
It is difficult,
you'd be ashamed, kind of.
But you get on with it,
and you just try and shut the door on it,
and hope that it disappears itself one day.
This is my bedroom.
And we just have all bedding,
all stacked on top of one another.
There is a window behind all that clutter.
The last time I saw that window was at least a year ago.
The 10th of April, myself and my husband split up, suddenly.
Suddenly for me.
After 20 years together, 18 and a half years married.
20 years together.
Like this was our room,
and I'd like it to be my room.
#
The bones of Ann's house is classic Irish cottage,
it's absolutely gorgeous,
so what I'm looking for
is something that's kind of going to amplify that.
This is the biggest declutter we have ever, ever had.
We've had to have additional people down to help us.
But Ann is ready, she called us, she wants to do this.
Just for the 3 of us to have a fresh start,
and start the next chapter of our lives, basically.
Hopefully it will be better after this,
can't get much worse.
Hi Ann!
You're not nervous?
No, not now.
Good, you will be in a while.
Right now, the route to the sorting tent is blocked
by the contents of the music room.
Job 1, clear a path.
Girls, do you see all this stuff on the floor, yeah,
are you happy enough for that to just go?
Both: happy enough for that to just go.
So with the twins helping out,
the most extensive clear out yet
gets underway.
The plan is simple,
everything must go,
including any mistaken impression Ann might have had
about the sheer scale of it all.
I knew I had a lot of stuff,
There we go, boom!
But when you see it piled up outside,
it's like "oh my God, I didn't have that much stuff,
did I really have that much stuff"
And I did have that much stuff.
I've never seen anything like it.
And we still haven't cleared out upstairs,
we're under enormous pressure today.
Finally the crew can get to work on Ann's bedroom.
It's all about coordination,
as boxes and bags descend from above,
they are joined by a torrent of clutter from the living room,
and still it keeps coming.
But, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
And for the first time in years,
it's coming through that bedroom window.
Outside, Ann's friend Maria,
can appreciate the full significance.
At the start I only came to the back door,
Ann wasn't too comfortable about letting me in.
She'd meet me at the door,
and we'd go.
So.
I'll be happy when it's all sorted.
Now that the rooms upstairs and down have been cleared,
Roisin can get to work measuring up this modest space,
for what will be an equally modest revamp.
This room is going to be painted.
This is really about giving the cottage a makeover,
a very simple elegant one.
Now, that room is different,
'cause it's an extension,
so we'll do a little... we might do a little injection,
of more colour in there.
It's taken the best part of 5 hours,
but a crew of 6 has achieved what once seemed impossible.
For Ann it's a revelation.
Jesus, it's so bright in here.
You can get air in.
And there's another ray of sunshine on the way.
Headed south, with renewed sparkle,
all ready to shine,
here's Peter!
Working with Roisin can sometimes mean you get a few unexpected things
thrown at you last minute.
And when you throw into the mix as well,
that it's an old house,
with, most likely, a few unexpected things as well,
there will be a lot going on in this one.
But I promised myself this year,
I'm going to be calm,
I'm going to be Zen this year.
How are you doing?
Good, how are you?
Okay.
Right, enough small talk.
2 rooms to overhaul in 2 days,
it sounds straightforward,
but, Peter knows better.
It's a great, big crack, Roisin.
I know that.
And that is condensation,
we're going to have to put a vent in the wall.
There's just such a big volume of stuff,
and there's stuff that I've seen here,
that I know that I can't....
you can't just come up and paint against that reveal,
because it's not even plastered,
so I've to frame that. Yes.
There's far more issues to do with the house itself,
than I thought there was going to be.
There's no way we can just do that room,
and we couldn't have left this room the way it was for the girls.
You couldn't have.
Well so that's it then, we'll just do these 2 rooms?
Ah, but, with the double doors removed
all this will be 1 room.
And then there's Ann's bedroom,
for which Roisin already has fairly elaborate plans.
What we're going to do is we're going to put a series
of flat, kind of timber panel pieces,
raised timber.
The other thing is,
a low window seat there.
Now we have drawer units designed to go in underneath that,
already made, za, za, za.
Long low shelf,
an upstand just there, framing along the edge of the window.
You want to sand this floor.
Sand and varnish that floor.
Sand and varnish .... paint this whole place?
Take out that wardrobe in the corner?
Do a decorative design along here?
A shelf along here,
and upstand over here?
Bed goes in the corner,
when does it stop?
There, just now.
That's the list.
You're mad, like.
I'd just better check,
that's the end of it (laughs).
I tell you right, honestly,
there's just so much.
Are you for real?
Are you honestly telling me that.
100%!
But you are brilliant at what you do.
Well come on, I'm going to have to start,
I have to get stuck in.
And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is how you get a builder onside.
As Peter and the lads get started on the sitting room,
an even bigger job looms outside,
with a small fleet of vans parked up the side of the cottage,
a conga line of bags is loaded up for recycling.
These are Monster high dolls.
You had all of these, lads!
Just the head.
Do you know what I used as well,
I used some of them, the headless ones,
for Halloween.
Scared?
You will be,
as Peter reveals a dark secret.
The more you dig, the more you will find.
And there's some pipe work at high level here.
Boss, the cylinder is there.
We've just uncovered a hotpress.
The wardrobe was hiding all the drainage from the toilet in there,
and the hot water cylinder,
and the pipes are coming through he ceiling.
Disaster!
I was not expecting to take down a wardrobe
and see a hotpress there.
That was unexpected.
Oh my God!
Eh, oh, yes and a pipe, el peep!
Do you remember I was saying about undiscovered little things,
that happen behind walls?
That hotpress is a mess.
Roisin?
I'm thinking.
I had known about that,
but I obviously didn't realise there there was only one piece of MDF
separating it,
I thought there would be a wall.
We've uncovered a big mess now,
a big mess.
You didn't even tell me about this earlier?
No, but I didn't think it was going to impact us.
We now have a hot press,
stand alone, free standing, open plan hotpress,
in Ann's bedroom.
There's a lot of pipe work there to be accommodated.
The whole thing has to be blocked in Roisin.
Let's be honest about this,
we can't be all fancy, nancy now.
A lot of work to be done here.
Like at the end of the first day,
literally all we've done is taken out a few carpets
and taken out a wardrobe.
Fancy meeting you here, lads!
We're under a little bit of stress,
little bit of tip toeing around the place.
Got a lot of lads arriving here tomorrow,
and I need clear direction what they're doing,
or genuinely we just won't get the job done.
That gets covered.
Yeah, but you'll still need leave access,
and shelve out the top of that.
I need instruction, clear instruction.
Do I have a couple of hours to think on this,
do we have 24 hours to sleep on it, even?
No.
Well not 24 hours, here tomorrow morning.
Frustrating is not the word.
#
"Home Rescue"
proudly sponsored by IKEA.
#
Home Rescue...
...proudly sponsored by IKEA.
#
Ann Penfold and her twin daughters Becky and Megan
don't usually get a lot of visitors to their cottage in Borris, County Carlow.
Yesterday the Home Rescue team arrived en masse,
to perform their biggest clearout yet.
Peter and his crew got straight to work on a house that hasn't seen the light of day for years.
It's been quite an eye-opener for everyone involved,
not least Peter, who found an entire hot press lurking behind the shelves in Ann's bedroom.
It's Day 2. As the temperature rises, there's a huge amount of sorting to do
and it's not limited to the garden.
We'd a late night last night
but being honest with you, it was quite successful
so I'm back and refreshed but I need direction,
and I need clear answers.
I wok up this morning, I had an hour to myself to do some work,
and I've realised that we found extra space for Ann upstairs.
so it's no longer a problem.
I know what we're doing now.
You had an epiphany? I had a bit of an epiphany. Wow.
Imparting that information is...
...it's all very well to say it out here,
but I've to go in there and do it.
It was just in my head... What did the Lord say to you?
The Lord said 'we are going to provide this lady
'with a walk-in wardrobe.'
We're going to form a blank end here
bring it out just a touch,
and then run the rail like that.
That's a bit more like in fairness.
This side, we continue that window seat all the way through here,
we have all the drawers here
and then shelving here.
The problem of the hot press is turned into a walk-in wardrobe
and a nook for all her books.
And so adversity becomes opportunity.
It's gonna make real good use of the space
and will separate that whole area from the bedroom, so that was excellent.
I need space, I need headspace,
I need calm space.
And I think after this, the three of us will...
...be more relaxed.
There could be vouchers in some of them.
It's em...
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
50 blips!
(Laughing)
Goes in here...for Saturday night!
There you go from Dan and Sophie and Christopher and Mike.
Fair play to you, lads!
Put it into your new purse.
See is there any more!
This one looks like it could be promising.
What the hell?!
Girls!
What is your mother at?!
This was my 50th birthday. When was your birthday?
5th of August, this year, so nearly two years.
Two years?!
Oh my God!
Ann is quids in!
And now that Peter's removed the double doors to the living room,
more hidden assets are revealed.
Happy? Oh yeah!
When you walk into that room and the doors are down,
the light hits you...it's, boom!
It's fantastic!
It's beautiful.
Is the shelves going back in the other side of that fireplace?
We might put a few builder's planks here.
I'm okay with time!
I don't know how Peter's doing?
The office has always been a junk room
and it kind of moved around the house like!
How do you mean?
Well if someone was staying in the office, 'cause we had a bed in there,
it went up to our room, rather than get rid of it.
I think the kids being happy is more important than the housework, being honest.
But the girls weren't happy at the minute with the clutter and stuff
and I wasn't and no one seemed to be happy with it.
Bye, bye, birdies
It's hot and tough to work but we're getting through stuff.
It's kinda quick, quick, slow, slow, slow quick.
By the end of Day 2 there's been huge progress,
but with just 24 hours to go, Roisin's begun to realise the scale of this project.
For the first time I'm going, will we actually get to finish?
There's just so much to do.
They've everything painted downstairs,
but we haven't anything fit out wise downstairs.
We've a lot done up here but they've no painting upstairs.
Usually at this point you're going
'this is where we have a false dawn,
and we might even take an early night,
there is no false down here, we are up against it.
Thank God it's hot because
this paint will need to dry very quickly...I mean really quickly!
It's the third and final day,
and there's no time to watch that paint dry or hold back.
As one full skip departs for the recycling depot,
another one arrives.
It's a relief to have a lot of that gone now,
a real relief that it's gone,
it just feels a weight has been lifted off your shoulders like, literally.
If only the same could be said for Peter,
still pinned down by an especially heavy workload.
We should be gone, like and there's still another two hours work in this room alone
before anything can be fitted out.
As new units are assembled,
remediation work and painting continues inside.
Soon it's time for Roisin to make a call,
are these rooms ready to be fitted out?
Well it all depends on how you look at it.
It wasn't the reaction I was hoping for, Roisin!
I love that.
There's not as much shelving as I'd hoped in there,
and there's no duct on that thing.
Just ran out of time, to be honest.
If I paint it and it still doesn't work,
I'll paint them in a colour I have to have that covered over.
You literally have to accept there's only so much we can do.
No I do accept that,
but that's no an option
for me that that's not okay.
We had to take the decision as to, do we spend another 2 hours at that
and not get the floor painted,
and we said no the floor had to painted.
Yeah.
I've asked Eamon to paint that the same colour as the wall.
That's not gonna work. Wait...
...let you have a look at it, and then you can tell me. It's not gonna work.
You're gonna waste time painting,
I'll come after with my spray thing, mask it all out, that's the whole day gone.
Do you remember the conversation I had with you yesterday
about running out of time and extra work and all that type of stuff,
this is the result of it.
You're gonna be mad keen to fit the place out and get rid of me
and all that extra work causes this situation, Roisin.
It's you not me!
Is what I'm trying to say.
I'm so glad I'm not married to you,
God bless your wife!
I bet she never wins a single argument.
But I am right about that.
No one gets to rest on their laurels quite yet,
there's just too much to be done,
as Ann's bedroom gets a fresh coat of paint,
work continues on the newly combined space downstairs.
Meanwhile, Ann's friends Maria and Teresa,
have dropped in with a little moral support.
I didn't realise how mad it had gotten for her
and how everything had built up.
But I think Ann will definitely keep going at the place now,
she's like an engine started up and she's ready to rock.
(Laughing)
It does make a difference, that you actually have support to do it
and help and...
...someone tapping you on the back or giving you a hug when you need it
it's nice!
(Laughing)
Support is the name of the game here
as a van load of flat pack furniture and fittings arrive,
Roisin's on hand with a keen eye and a level head.
Over, over. To the right? To the right.
I think she's come up with some very clever ideas
and her use of colour has been very good on this one
so I really hope that Ann and the girls like it, I think they will.
Even now as the team starts clearing the garden,
there's a lot of assembly and fitting to be done,
and not much time to do it.
From here on, it's all about the fine details.
No as not to spoil the surprise, Ann and the girls are whisked off into town
so Roisin and the team can do thier thing.
It's gonna be so exciting to see it now.
Peter's told you to let it fall on me, hasn't he?
The cottage ahs already been turned inside out,
now Roisin is about to bring the outside in.
This is the way, it's going like that, isn't it?
Into the room? Into the room.
That's gonna hit you in the face when you walk into the wardrobe.
I'm hoping it won't.
We'll go up through the front door with this.
She's a hard woman not to like, to be honest,
but she's a hard woman to work for, I can tell you that!
(Laughing)
Roisin, please!
In and over.
Now.
It's beautiful!
I can't see the pipe from the trees!
Something else alright!
Interactive architecture. I love it, Roisin!
I'm ignoring your cynicism!
After three days, the sorting tents come down and the final finesse begins.
But with less than an hour to finish,
the team is under serious pressure.
We're later than we've ever been,
there's people running around and we're still not done!
So just...
That is definitely the longest, hardest job we've done,
the whole crew are just wrecked.
Absolutely shattered.
It's lovely. Yeah? Yeah.
Sometimes we do push the boat out a bit too far and I think it caught us this time,
but having said that, the transformation,
when you see that coming together at the end, it's amazing.
Yay.
(Laughing)
Done and dusted!
This is nice.
You did a good job here.
Sorry about the delay!
(Laughing)
It's taken three days, eight grand and the combined efforts of 20 people,
but Ann's 1930s cottage has been given a new lease of life.
Once cramped, dark and stacked to the ceiling with so much clutter
that even the sun couldn't get in,
Ann's bedroom is unrecognisable.
With beautifully restored floorboards,
a new window seat,
and a walk-in wardrobe, this is at last
a room she can call her own.
Oh my God!!
That's amazing!
It's not like the same room!
(She laughs)
I've a tree from outside!
I love everything!
I love it so much.
It was the first one I thought, 'I wouldn't mind this room,
'this is nice', because there's two windows,
and it's fresh,
so hope she knocks a bit of craic out of that room!
But it's very cleaned out now
and this is a place for you to read and it's your space for you.
And the light coming in is stunning.
I can imagine sleeping in here, I will actually sleep in here.
And it's not a place to store anything,
it's a place to store you. Yeah.
Just you, it's a place for you.
I'm so thrilled!
Thank you so much! Oh you're welcome!
Three days ago, Ann's living room had more books and magazines
than a newsagents
and barely enough room to sit and read them,
but it was zen compared to the music room next door,
a cacophony of clutter.
Now these two rooms have become one.
Warn, welcoming and filled with light,
there's space to work, play, relax and entertain.
Oh my God!
(They exclaim)
This is gorgeous!
Look at the fireplace.
Your blackboard...
...space for your music
and that's a special yoga mat
so this is your yoga, music, chill room
and this is where you grow to be teenagers.
They were completely shocked as well,
they weren't expecting what we did to the room.
I'm gonna have to sit down!
Aside from anyting we did,
that house, the floors are clear.
I'm never gonna get used to this.
Absolutely gorgeous!
Thank you! You're most welcome. It's so different.
Can't believe you got this done in three days.
I can't believe we did either!
Yeah I'm surprised we got it done in three days as well.
Very surprised!
It's gonna do us all the world of good.
A fresh start and...new beginnings.
Subtitles RTE 2019