A home where art, architecture and everyday life are in constant conversation.
A glance through architect Ekaterina Voronova’s portfolio is a tale of two halves. She transforms historic, time-worn properties with the care of a preservationist and the boldness of an architect into elegant, sophisticated homes full of personality.
But none is more personal than her own 1930s Dun Laoghaire semi-D.
By Orla Neligan
Photographs Shauna Lally
Styling Sarah Twigg Doyle
When she and her husband Tony bought the house more than twenty years ago, it was, in her words, ‘a complete bargain for all the wrong reasons’. A huge crack ran across the front façade.
Half the house was sinking thanks to unstable foundations, the walls were damp, and the place had no heating. An elderly man had lived there alone for decades, and little, if anything, had been updated since the 1930s.
The kitchen still had the original cooker, which Ekaterina used for two years while they made the place barely livable. But while most people saw a disaster, she, having trained as a conservation architect, just saw potential.
“Structurally, it terrified other buyers,” she says.
“For me, it just meant the price was right.”
The renovation was challenging and exhausting, made harder by the fact that she, Tony and her two children, George and Sasha, had to live in the house throughout.
Stabilising the house required silicone injections into the ground, planning permission took time, and with two young children at the time, the family lived on top of one another in a two-bedroom layout that had been carved into tiny box rooms.
Yet Ekaterina knew exactly what she was doing. “People think it’s harder for architects renovating their own home, but in many ways it’s easier,” she says. “No client to answer to.
Making decisions for myself was the easy part; I knew they were the right ones.”
https://www.ekaterinavoronova.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ekaterinavoronova.architect/
Read more tips, the full interview and every image from this renovated home in the new issue of House and Home magazine.
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