‘Luxury on a budget’ Killucan couple on Home of the Year

A Killucan husband and wife’s semi-detached house has been selected for this year’s Home of the Year competition on RTÉ 1, which starts this evening Tuesday, February 16.

The front of Kevin and Ediana Dolan’s home, which appears on tonight’s show, is pleasant if unspectacular, but there is nothing bog-standard about the interior.

Since they bought their home three years ago, the couple have firmly stamped their mark on it, and each room is unique. What makes their efforts even more impressive is that they have done virtually all of the work themselves, except the electrics, and on a strict budget.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, Brazilian native Ediana and Kevin, who is originally from Tulsk in Roscommon, said that when it comes to the division of labour, their skills and talents dovetail nicely.

Kevin, who is an engineer by profession, enjoys carpentry and general DIY and has picked up many of his skills from YouTube, while Ediana, who was an English teacher in her home country, has found that she has a real flair for colour and interior design.

After years in rented accommodation, when they bought their house in 2017, Ediana and Kevin decided that they were going to create a living space that met the needs of their family as well as reflecting their personalities.

The house, a three-bedroom semi-detached in an estate, had been rented out for nine years and was in need of a revamp. The first thing the couple did was paint the magnolia walls white to give themselves a blank canvass, and then they got to work.

The couple have created a host of eye-catching features, including a dining room wall being turned into a blackboard with special paint, which they decorate to coincide with the seasons. The dining room is also home to a bespoke table Kevin made.

Aside from it being a shared interested, Ediana says that her and Kevin’s DIY efforts are through necessity as much as anything.

“We are luxury on a budget. We are living in a housing estate and are not millionaires. I am a daughter of a builder and Kevin works in construction and I said ‘why are we paying someone to do something that we could do ourselves?’. Most of the time it works,” says Ediana, who advises that the quickest, cheapest and easiest way to revamp a room is through painting – something anyone can do.

“If it doesn’t work, you can paint over it. Painting can make such a different to an environment,” she says.

Describing their style as modern with a hint of older influences, the couple even got their children Oisin (8) and Caoimhe (5) to help design their own rooms.

“Our daughter she picked the colours for her room and she likes mountains, so we painted them on the walls. Our son likes Batman, so we included that in the design. Because they’re their spaces, I was always asking their opinions.

The houses that are often featured on Home of the Year are architect-designed mansions or quirky cottages or period properties where no expense has been spared in renovations. The Dolans said that they got a bit of a shock when the production company rang them last summer to inform them that their home had made the cut.

“I didn’t think our house would be picked, “ Ediana says. “I was really surprised when they got back to us to say were selected. It was very exciting,” she said.

Being selected for the show, which is now in its seventh series, also gave them the motivation to get moving on projects they had been planning but had put on the long finger, including doing up the bathrooms. Impressively, Kevin carried out the plumbing work and also did the tiling, with a bit of help from, Ediana, whose father was a builder before his retirement.

Kevin says that while he “wouldn’t be installing a water tank”, instruction videos for most minor plumbing and other DIY tasks are available online and with a bit of patience and self confidence, anyone can do them.

The more DIY projects the couple have completed, the more belief they have in themselves. Ediana has been displaying their efforts on her Instagram account, where she has followers from all over the world.

After transforming her home into something that looks like it jumped out of the pages of an interior design magazine, Ediana has plans to turn her passion into a career. It’s not hard to see why.