Room to Improve is back on our TV screens every Sunday night. Now in its tenth series, it certainly has seen a number of changes over the years as Ireland went from boom to bust and back out again. Room to Improve doesn’t provide a quick makeover whereby single rooms are transformed by a team of people working frantically to get it done inside the deadline of a couple of days. Dermot Bannon transforms whole houses and it’s hugely interesting to see how a house can look so different, both inside and outside, when it is completed.
Programme 1: A renovation and extension in Malahide
Each programme follows a similar pattern. We travel with Dermot as he goes to meet the homeowners, as if he is seeing it for the first time too. Ideas, concepts, wish lists and budgets are discussed. As the work gets underway, conflict always crops up. The budget either has to be increased, or something highly desirable needs to be removed from the wish list. Alternatively, the home owners do something that Dermot isn’t happy with or he does something that the home owners hate. By the end of the programme though, tempers are resolved and it’s best friends all around. The home owners may have spent more but they love every inch of their new home, and Dermot is happy too.