Artist Una Sealy extended her home to include a large kitchen that is a gathering place, studio and gallery, writes Emma Cullinan

Una Sealy is an artist whose work is on view in the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin, and currently in an exhibition in the Syracuse Convention Center in New York, in a show called Inishlacken the last Parish. She also teaches at the National Gallery in Dublin and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA).

She grew up in Howth and lives there with Chris and their son Douglas and daughter Eileen.

You grew up in Howth but spent time away. How did you come to buy this house?

We came here after living in San Francisco and rented around the area for a while.

We bought the house in 2000. The most we could afford was a terraced house in the village which we like anyway and very few such houses in Howth village would have such a good garden. That gave me the possibility to build a studio.

And when did you build that?

We put up the studio in 2004. There was no side or rear access to the site so we wanted a prefab, otherwise builders would be in and out of the house. We got it from Shomera and I designed it. I wanted it to be an L-shape so that it would look less shed-like.

Did you do work on the house?

When we moved into the house there was one room on the ground floor and a galley kitchen to the back with no room for a table and chairs. So the four of us would sit in one room with one person watching television, someone trying to play a computer game, another on the tin whistle and another reading.

I got quite worried one Friday when Chris said he couldn’t stand it any more and headed off but he came back half an hour later and said he had found someone who could build us an extension and who would start on Monday. He was a friend of ours, Kevin O’Byrne, a brilliant local builder, a genius.

Did you stay in the house while work was being carried out?

Kevin said that we could stay in the house while he worked but the first day the kitchen came down and it was a bit of a shock. We hadn’t arranged to go anywhere and hadn’t packed. I rang my parents and said, can we stay for a few weeks – which it would have been if we had only done the extension but while Kevin was at it we decided to get the whole house done. We put insulation in the roof, floored the attic, rewired and replumbed. We also knocked down walls upstairs, where we did have three bedrooms but you had to walk through Eileen’s bedroom to get to Douglas’s room.

Basically we got a new house and were in at the beginning of 2007. Having two rooms downstairs has made all the difference.

The kitchen is quite simple – except for the huge cooker – and you don’t have many cupboards

I don’t like fitted kitchens. We live a few doors away from a shop so we only buy what we need for a meal and don’t need lots of storage.

The kitchen cupboards came from the Panelling Centre in flat packs which Chris put in. The big cooker replaced an old one that came with the house, on which only two rings worked. Our dresser came from a friend, Bernadette Madden, the artist, who was looking for a good home for it. It is brilliant: all the food goes in the bottom and the plates are in the top. It is 100 times nicer than most things you can get.

The sideboard came from the antique shop next door; if they have something that they don’t think will sell they ask us if we want it.

They also gave us a coffee table with a glass top – which we are all making mosaics under with sea glass gathered from the beach.

The dining chairs all came from jumble sales, fêtes and things and my sister-in-law found some of them in a junk shop. The lights above the table came from B+Q.

The big table has been doing the rounds of friends’ houses for 30 years – whoever has room for it gets it. We don’t actually own it and won’t have it for ever.

I first saw it in one friend’s house and when she moved to England it went to another friend and he decided it was too big so swapped with us for a smaller table – we got it when we were renting a large place and then it went into storage for a while until we built this extension.

I painted the table blue. It seats 14 and lots of life happens around here because we live on the Main Street and friends passing by knock on the door.

They automatically sit down at the table and are immediately in danger of being painted.

The table attracts a monumental amount of junk and stuff and I am always getting still life subjects here.

You have painted a picture of people at the table

I paint in here when kids are off school because I would be a bit far away in the studio. The room can affect the way I paint because I am more inclined to put people in the pictures but then figures are what I really like doing.

The central figure in the table painting is a Lithuanian friend of mine and the child on the right is the son of another friend, who has a great face. Eileen is sitting on the table and Douglas is standing at the back. It was exhibited in the RHA this summer. To paint it, I stood on the chair in the corner because I wanted to get it at an unusual angle and to get a view up the hall.

You have lots of paintings in here.

It is quite a good gallery space and the light is great. I have lots of other artists’ work in here. I swap work with friends. We might not be able to afford to buy but we can swap and build up a collection.

I would rather be surrounded by paintings than kitchen cupboards from floor-to-ceiling.