Dermot is the youngest of seven children, all but one of whom joined the family furniture restoration and floor sanding company E.V. Kidd when they left school. The business now operates from a former farmhouse on Glasnevin Hill, better known locally as Washerwoman's Hill after the laundry that traded in the area. Dermot runs a restaurant from the main house.

"We grew up on Marguerite Road, behind Smurfits. Da lost his leg when he was 13 in a scouting accident and a sister taught him to French polish.

As each family member grew up, they went into the business, apart from one sister who lives in Belfast. Three brothers and three sisters were still working for my father when he died in 1995. We worked out of the back of the house on Marguerite Road up till then.

Two of the bedrooms were rented out, so there were nine of us sharing three bedrooms. At one time, there were five brothers sharing a box room. We rented a converted train carriage in Rush for the summer holidays and Da used to travel up and down.

Since we started working together, we go away three weekends a year to keep in touch.

During our school days, we were all dragged out of bed on Saturday mornings because every available body was needed for the work. Weekdays, the Botanic Gardens was where the local kids went mitching from school. I went to the local Christian Brothers' school down the road. The cemetery wall was our wall and we played in the turrets and built houses in the big trees. Then on down to the railway.

Two of my older brothers were djs and I used to go with them to Wicklow some weekends and maybe get a free pint at the end of the night. But there was plenty of fun in Glasnevin - the Claude Hall, the Na Fianna GAA club and the tennis club had a Saturday night disco. Otherwise, we went into town and walked home. When we bought the old farmhouse in 1989 we built a workshop at the back and opened a restaurant in 1996 at the front.

There used to be a wash-house on the hill run by the nuns, one of the biggest in the city, and the washerwomen used to bring the washing down to the Tolka. The fee was a penny a basket. The building here is 200 years old and has a preservation order on it. So we rebuilt it, tried an antique shop for a while and now its called The Washerwoman Cafe - and I wouldn't have it any other way."

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Good supply of period houses.

Botanic Gardens and Griffith Park

Can walk to city centre

Variety of house types.

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Fixtures at Croke Park cause traffic and other disturbances.

PVC-blight affecting period houses.

Inadequate train service from Drumcondra station.