Straight talk on roofing, trades, and home improvement in Ireland
A garden room sounds straightforward until you start asking the practical questions. How big can it be before you need planning permission? Can you just run an extension lead from the house? What happens to…
Most homeowners ask three roofers or builders to quote the same job and then wonder why the prices are so far apart. One comes in at €4,500, one at €7,200, and one at €5,800. You…
A few summers back I decided to lay a patio in the back garden. About 30 square metres, natural sandstone flags, nothing mad. I watched hours of videos, read forums, bought the right tools. I…
Most tiling tutorials start with a clean, flat, dry wall and a confident presenter who makes the whole job look like an afternoon's work. If you've got a pre-war terrace in Cork or a 1950s…
Ask almost any Irish homeowner what they think of flat roofs and you'll get the same answer: avoid them. There's a widely held belief in this country that flat roofs are basically a ticking clock,…
Finding a reliable plasterer when you have no building contacts and no idea what you're looking for is one of those jobs that feels harder than it should be. Plastering looks straightforward until it goes…
October arrives and most of us are still catching up from summer, half-finished jobs in the garden, a pile of pots that never got moved, and a lawn that looked fine until it suddenly didn't.…
Most homeowners I know have never hired a quantity surveyor. They get quotes, pick a builder, and hope for the best. For small jobs, that works fine. But once a project starts pushing past €30,000…
We started the kitchen extension with complete confidence. My wife had done her research, we had a builder we trusted, and our neighbour had put on something almost identical two years before without any bother.…
Two neighbours on the same road, same budget, same wet Irish winter. One goes with block paving, one goes with tarmac. Five years later, they have very different opinions. That is basically the story of…
Most roofing problems don't start on the roof. They start at the kitchen table, when a homeowner agrees to work without asking the right questions first. A roofer who gives vague answers, gets defensive, or…
