If you’re looking for straight lines and right angles, you’ve come to the wrong place. College sweethearts Max and Emily Fedorov, who met in Bolton Street in 2010 when he was studying for a BA in architecture and she was studying industrial product design, have thrown a curve ball at the look and feel of suburbia.
The partners in life – and in business – run Third Mind Design and its residential interior-design offshoot Rain Ann Design, named after their four-year-old daughter. Now they have used their home as a calling card for their fresh approach to family life.
The couple were friends for a year before they started going out, and have been together ever since, setting up their creative agency 13 years ago. Its remit quickly expanded to take in branding and commercial fit-outs; it counts the Brickyard gastropub in Dundrum among it projects, as well as several Grindstone coffee shops, including one in Google’s Boland’s Mills offices, and another at Dublin Landings.
Having both worked in bars while at college – Max in the since demolished rugby pub Kiely’s in Donnybrook, Emily in The Morgue, aka The Templeogue Inn – they had hands-on experience of the industry and its requirements.
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Residential refurbishment was the logical next step. This saw them take on the Dublin 4 Wellington House project, which saw a former eye clinic transformed into two homes, one of which won an honourable mention in the interior design/houses interior category of the 2024 Architecture Master Prize international awards.
Their Stillorgan home is not their first. They bought a terraced house in Stepaside in 2020, before the Covid lockdowns and ensuing price hikes. They upgraded it by developing the kitchen, converting the attic and installing a garden room, and admit they got lucky with their timing when they chose to sell, as they had built up considerable equity in the property. This allowed them to trade up to what was, when they purchased it, a three-bedroom, one-bathroom detached home with a conservatory and a car port, in Stillorgan.
The couple could have lived in the house as it was but perhaps naturally, given their backgrounds, they wanted a renovation project.
“We could see the vision, ” says Max.
“Max is a lot more left field than me, Emily says. “He wanted a big fireplace in the kitchen.”
And he got one, albeit one that is for now something of a work in progress. That’s a theme throughout and it’s refreshingly relatable to hear about; in real life, even design experts don’t get to finish every single element of their home immediately.
The place is a mash-up between the vaulted ceilings and arched doorways of Tuscan villas and Portuguese textures.
“We wanted a space that feels like we’re on holiday. We both like going on holidays to Portugal.”
And not just for holidays; the couple are opening a second office in Quinta do Lago, in the Algarve. It will allow them to keep expanding their supplier network, for projects in both Portugal and Ireland.
Back in Stillorgan, the couple presented each other with mood boards with ideas to reimagine the space, their starting point the question, ‘What is the feeling you want to get from the house?’ Max explains.
“We met in the middle in terms of functionality,” Emily adds.
They bought the property, which then extended to 131sq m, last May. They completely rejigged the layout, moving the front door and hall to the side, where the car port was. They knocked the conservatory and built a double-height extension, adding a total of about 24 square metres to the original footprint.
A bronze door handle by Philip Watts sets the tone for what’s inside. Now the house opens into a hall illuminated by a glazed courtyard, complete with goldfish pond surrounded by Zen-like stones. This helps to bring light into the centre of the house.
Across the pond is their daughter’s playroom, a nook to its rear, where she can play without feeling surveyed, while remaining in the broken-plan room. She uses the glass as a scribble board.
The main space is dramatic, as voluptuously curved as Kim Kardashian. It leads from a dining area to a sitting area and then to the kitchen, which is divided into two distinct parts.
Above the round-edged island is a scalloped ceiling that emulates Tuscan tiles and beamed ceilings. The island features a Bertazzoni gas hob and teppanyaki plate set into its microcement countertop, an aesthetic decision that was also a more affordable an option than stone, Max and Emily explain. An Elica extractor cum light set above it does double duty.
[ ‘I wanted a Japanese feel to the house’: Renovating a 1960s Dublin bungalowOpens in new window ]
Max is a bit of a coffee connoisseur. He has multiple devices on the shelving, including a La Pavoni espresso machine, a small Dolce and Gabbana moka pot and a Turkish coffee maker. He also has not one but two grinders – a Weber Workshops specialist espresso model, and a Varia.
To the left is a “dirty kitchen”, so called because it’s where a lot of the dirty work of food prep takes place, hidden from view. Casement windows open on to the garden, which means Max, who does most of the cooking, can pass ingredients out to cook in the outdoor kitchen, which is equipped with an asado-style barbecue by Somerset Grill, a ceramic Big Green Egg and a pizza oven.
Behind a bank of units is a pantry cum home bar, stocked to the gills with premium tequilas, mescals and whiskeys. This part of the house is set down a level and deliberately doesn’t have any underfloor heating, so perishables stay cool. The couple are still waiting on the finishing touch, a secret door to close it off, to ensure no heat loss.
There is no direct lighting, save for task areas, in any part of the house. A large eyeball-shaped globe, Iris, by AND, oversees mealtime proceedings, a cyclops above the round-edged microconcrete-covered dining table, custom-made by Belgian firm Muundo. Chairs by Portuguese brand Kave Home surround it. Coved lighting strips are concealed where the walls and ceiling meet, behind a deliberate curve created by the plaster to conceal the strips.
The flooring and bathroom fixtures were sourced from Deansgrange-based Design Emporium. Travertine slabs were cut to create a custom herringbone pattern underfoot, which is warmed by underfloor heating.
Across the hall is the sittingroom, which is accessed via a pocket door. They describe the soft white space “like walking on a cloud”, for there is almost 3cm of underlay beneath an off-white carpet that can be steam cleaned to remove stains and wear from visiting four-year-olds.
“We wanted everything to be soft,” Emily explains.
It also helps with dimming down sound, as does the pale but tactile round-form sofa, also Kave Home.
The room’s focal point is a small cast-iron stove set atop an extended raw concrete hearth, with a brutalist raw plaster surround. They’re still waiting on curtains whose tops will appear to disappear behind a dropped ceiling, Emily explains.
The staircase is a tale of two halves. The steps visible from the hall are made of solid oak, and have been deliberately extended to create shelving surfaces for decorative objects.
As you climb to the bedrooms on the first floor, the steps become carpeted in the same deep pile that is in the sittingroom, “to help with the transition to calm”, Emily explains.
The property now has four bedrooms – three doubles and a single. Their daughter’s room is to the front and features an en suite bathroom with both sink and toilet set to her height. These can be changed as she grows.
The principal bedroom has a bouclé king-size bed and an illuminated arch drawing attention to where the TV is. At least half of this large but broken-plan space is designated to its en suite bathroom. Here there are twin travertine sinks and the space steps up a level to a stone resin free-standing Zen soaking bath, complete with step and a wet-room style shower with rainwater head. It is the ultimate in luxury.
To its left is a long walk-in wardrobe, custom built using Ikea modular components.
The property is transformed, but such projects are not cheap. The firm takes on projects starting from €200,000 upwards, but their own home would cost more than twice that to execute. Their fee is between 9 and 13 per cent of the overall build budget depending on the scale of service required, whether it is simply interior design or if there is architectural design also required.
Before shots of the house
The work included the removal of the conservatory and the hedges in the back garden, which extended the depth of the exterior by 2m. They have paved one half of the south-facing sheltered space and plan to lawn the other side.
