We bought our  lovely 1940s home in the Summer  of 2018. It needed a lot of work to bring it up to modern standards. We heard about Renova through our architect, Michael Kelly, who had been hearing good things from his former colleague, Sian, who works there as their in-house architect . Michael suggested we go along and see what they were about, having heard positive things from Sian. I met first with John Martin, the charming, charismatic  co-director of Renova in their office in Wicklow, to discuss our ideas for our new home ( the other director is the also lovely Alan Stevens). I came away from our meeting on top of the world. John makes it sound easy, straight forward. He offered something simple: they would do the work on our house on time and within budget. ‘No problem. It’s what we do.’

The one slight obstacle we saw was that we had already consulted with Michael Kelly, our architect, who had invested some time and energy into our project and we were reluctant to let him go. To their credit  Renova agreed to work with Michael in remodelling our home, instead of keeping it all in house, which is their preference. He designed and was very involved in overseeing the work, while they built it and fitted it out and project managed the whole thing.

We were assigned a wonderful foreman to our project. Lorcan and his team arrived punctually every morning to do their work. They left the site neat and tidy every evening. Their work was precise and skilful. We never once felt the frustration that we heard from so many of our friends who have renovated homes, about vacant sites, poor communication, messy workmanship, lapsed timelines. We always felt listened to. We always felt like they were all striving to finish the best house they could for us. The team, including project manager Paul , communicated with us regularly about progress ( or lack of progress) , decisions to be made at each step etc. Site visits were arranged regularly. The whole experience was very calm and actually very enjoyable.

We met early in the process with Karina, who was their in-house designer at the time. Karina was brilliant at what she does but always making us feel like we were steering the designs. Having a designer at hand to help was one of the real advantages of Renova for us. Her eye for colour and design helped us to create a  finish in our home that we would have struggled to achieve on our own. The fact that she worked in tandem with the whole team made the process very seamless.

I recommend Renova to anyone renovating their home because they are truly committed to doing a good job. They have unbelievable standards of client care. And one of the best things about them is that every single one I met, from John and Alan at the helm, to Lorcan and the team on site, Paul overseeing everything and Sian and Karina on design, were committed and decent people, who are good at what they do and will genuinely be rooting for you to have a great experience in doing what can be a very stressful thing in your life.

Go and chat to John. See for yourself… Thanks guys.