Sometimes it feels as though our homes find us, rather than the other way around. After nine years in London, Ruth McGahey and her husband, Andrew, put their four-bedroom Balham Victorian terrace house on the market and decided to return home to Ireland. “We had been searching for a place to live, but without much luck,” Ruth reminisces. “My friend Róisín called and told me that she passed a house on her way to work every day, that it was for sale, and that she thought it would be perfect for us.” Seven years after that fortuitous tip-off, Ruth, Andrew and their three children are in situ in County Meath, where the pair have been lovingly renovating the five-bed home ever since.
Ruth’s Instagram account has documented the redesign process. Fittingly named House of Goose after Ruth’s nickname (“People have always called me Goose”), the carefully curated visual diary reveals Ruth’s style; an elegant free-standing bath overlooking green fields, mustard occasional chairs with matching prints in a children’s room, a fringed pendant lamp haloing the wooden dining table, wishbone chairs and oversized vases, milk jugs stuffed with foliage and fresh flowers. House of Goose is refined; an elevated country house with bags of style, impeccably decorated yet relaxed. A smattering of soft furnishings and hints of children’s toys remove any notions that this is a show house. “I’m not precious,” Ruth assures. “I believe a house should look good but be comfortable and lived in.” In the background, her small children are gleefully playing, and one is looking for a sweet treat bribe. With biscuits located and doled out among the crew, Ruth casts her mind back to those first days at the house.
Video by Sofft Productions
Despite some of its classical features (stone pillars at the front porch, large bay windows with sash finishes), the home is, in fact, a new build. “It was a year and a half old when we bought it,” Ruth explains, “That was in 2015.” Surprisingly, it wasn’t love at first sight – for Ruth at least. “It took me a minute,” she laughs. “Andrew loved it immediately, but for me, it was very beige and magnolia – not really my style. I knew it would take a lot of work to put my stamp on it and would have to be adapted to serve our young family. It was much bigger than our home in London, which was a little intimidating as a project to undertake.” However, the house’s location and dual aspect sealed the deal, and renovations began 18 months after move-in.
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As an interior architect and interior designer, Ruth was methodical in her planning. The majority of the renovation took just four months, a short timeline for the degree of work achieved. “We sat down together and made a list of what we would ideally love to do with the space, and it snowballed during the renovation,” Ruth remembers. “At one point, I looked around, and the bathrooms and ceilings were gone. I thought, oh my God, I just wanted to change the floor!”
The downstairs flooring was the most challenging undertaking but proved most transformative. “It had been tiled in the front hall, which stretched all the way to a back room with timber floors. I hated that, so I created one floor throughout, an oak parquet that we had stained and lacquered on-site. Then we broke through the kitchen to open up the entire space. It transformed the ground floor. After 4½ months, and having designed it for a year and a half on and off and rationalising what we did and didn’t want to do, what worked well, even circulation-wise, opening up the double rooms downstairs to the livingroom is what made a big difference.”
Upstairs also required reconfiguration. An en suite with a walk-in wardrobe was blocked off from the bedroom and opened up to the landing to create a bright family bathroom (that now homes that aforementioned free-standing bath).
Today, light spills into almost every corner of the home, a testament to Ruth and Andrew’s vision of opening the space up and out. Since then, Ruth has been decorating and styling the house, carefully considering each and every investment. “I’m not flippant when it comes to home pieces,” Ruth says. “I feel a house that’s lived in should have a comfortable amount of layers, whether through artwork, rugs, soft furnishings, sculpture or ceramics. I am a self-confessed lamp lover! I don’t subscribe to the picture-perfect Instagram styling, where you know a painfully curated corner is simply not the reality.”
While the home is a soothing mixture of pastel-hued furnishings, natural materials and pops of colour, there is one space that Ruth had struggled to perfect. “Our Good Room or drawingroom has no TV, and we have always used it. Especially over Christmas and lockdown, sitting in it and having that quiet, tech-free space is sacred. It was the last room to be furnished, and though I love the space itself, I always knew the wall colour didn’t work. It was a very pale, cold grey and needed something warmer.”
Wanting to respect the rest of the home but bring warmth and new life to the Good Room, Ruth turned to the Dulux Heritage Range, a collection of 112 contemporary shades in timeless tones. “I found the range really usable,” says Ruth. “I think there’s a lovely depth to the colours, which attracted me to them.” Ruth says the paint gives a luxurious finish and was a dream to apply. Her criteria for the space were specific. “I needed tones that would complement the room’s main feature [a creamy limestone fireplace], so instantly that ruled out a lot of colours. I also needed tones that would work with the furniture and soft furnishings we had already invested in.”
After testing and comparing shades, Ruth met her matches; Setting Stone, a sophisticated, Georgian-inspired neutral for the walls, and Turtledove Grey, a restful, silvery shade for the ceilings. The dual colour palette proved game-changing. “It was the final piece of the puzzle,” Ruth smiles. “As soon as the room was painted, I loved it. Immediately it warmed and enclosed the space. It’s a big room, opening up to the garden and the hall. The paint gives it the cosiness I was looking for. The more furniture and pieces I added back into the room, the better it felt.”
With the puzzle complete, Ruth is looking forward to making a few final adjustments. “I added pink through flowers and vases to warm and enhance the room and add vibrancy. Our sideboard from Roche Bobois has been topped off with faux magnolia to conceal the fact that there’s no artwork on the wall behind,” muses Ruth. “I need to find the perfect piece because now, thanks to the new colours, that wall can hold a sizeable, bold piece, which I’m excited about.”
As for any further changes in the house, Ruth says the project has inspired her. “There are a few changes I’m looking at,” she laughs. “My daughter’s room is pink, and she’s over it. She’s nine now and wants it painted, so we may have to choose another Dulux Heritage shade to keep her happy.”
For Ruth, there will always be layers to uncover and reimagine in their forever home. For now, though, the family finally has a Good Room worthy of House of Goose.
Explore the range at selected stockists throughout Ireland. See duluxheritage.ie for more details.
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