When you outgrow the home you’re living in, most of us have to try to trade up or extend the existing house.

Both options are expensive in today’s market.

But, by growing up on a farm and learning a trade, talented cabinet maker Conor Kelly, founder of Snug furniture, was able to do a lot of the expensive work himself when he did a self-build extension to his Co Wicklow home.

Kelly and his wife, Nell Roddy, were lucky enough back in 2014 to have been able to build on family land in the Glen of Imaal.

Childhood sweethearts, they met when both were in bands as teenagers. She was a singer and guitarist. He was just the drummer, he says.

After college, he went to Kenya to volunteer, teaching locals to make furniture with the materials that were available to them. It’s an ethos that he brought to Snug, the furniture-making company he set up in his native Co Wicklow, in 2014.

People want to know where their timber is coming from, he says. “I try to use materials close to me, from local family farmland or the surplus of trees from the Glen of Imaal woods.”

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Schooled in a myriad of skills, all of these proved useful when building their home.

“You have to teach yourself most things in agriculture and construction within reason,” he says. He also had friends and family in trades that he could call on.

Nell is involved in another industry that is a big employer in the county – film. She’s a film distributor and runs a company called Breakout Pictures, whose productions include An Cailín Ciúin, That They Might Face the Rising Sun and the recently released Blue Road:The Edna O’Brien Story.

The family dog, Charlie in the living room where you can see a sideboard by Snug

Nell and Conor outside their H-shaped home

In 2017, the couple welcomed their daughter Peetie, so named after her maternal grandmother, Patricia, the pet name her family had for her.

“We both work from home, and we needed more space.”

So they decided to extend. The original house was already a good size. The two-bedroom property with mezzanine measured about 148sq m (1,600sq feet) and included a large open-plan living kitchen.

Kelly’s workshop, where he makes all his furniture, is also on their site, and he put it to exceedingly good use when it came to extending the house.

The plan was to take a self-build approach to create a home that could double as a showroom for his furniture, to showcase his skills, and allow customers to come on site and see and sit on the various pieces, all in a residential setting.

A side view showing the inverted dormer window, corrugated steel roof and the 350 square metres of exterior Siberian larch cladding, made and installed by Conor.

The couple at one of several sheltered outside spaces where they can enjoy the fresh air, rain or shine.

Having lived on site in the original house for several years, the couple already knew what vistas they wanted to frame and where the light fell. They worked with Dalkey-based Alyn Chambers Architects to sketch up suitable ideas. “We wanted open plan spaces, big windows taking in the views, polished concrete floors and tactile pieces of furniture,” he says.

And the sense of space they have now is as vast as the surrounding countryside. The home is H-shaped with a long entrance hall that doubles as a gallery for his furniture, connecting the old house to the newly constructed part.

To the right is the original property, the layout for which has been reimagined. It now has four bedrooms, two upstairs, and the open plan space on the ground floor has been converted into two more bedrooms and a TV room. This is the wing where eight-year-old daughter Peetie sleeps.

Conor and Nell in their Scandinavian-inspired kitchen.

The kitchen units, island, table, bench and polished concrete floor were all made and finished by Conor.

Across the hall is the new extension. Set on an east-west axis, it features an open-plan living space that is zoned around a floating staircase. The kitchen is in the east end and gets morning light, the dining table faces south, and the lounge is at the west end where you can watch the sun go down. From each area there is access outdoors to a covered exterior, designed with the weather in mind and the need for shelter, as well as those pastoral views.

Conor in his workshop, which is adjacent to their home

A detail of the open tread staircase with fashionable batten frame.

Kelly did a lot of the work and the hard labour himself. He made the stairs and their surrounds, the kitchen cabinets, which feature solid ash doors with a band saw effect, with some units painted in the same dark look as the exterior, to reflect outside, he explains. He also fabricated the larder and the utility rooms. In addition, he made all the furniture. “I wanted to do it myself, to leave my handprint on everything.”

After getting quotes ranging from €10,000 to €25,000 to do the polished concrete floors, “wild money”, as he puts it, he also did them. He hired the equipment for a week and a half, for about €1,500, and tested it out on a corner of the ground floor first, in a spot where he could make a mistake, he says.

“You have to have the knowledge, some class of an idea of how to work with stone,” he cautions. He didn’t want a uniform finish that looked “like a giant tile”. Instead, his floor features contrast – in some spots the coarser aggregate has risen to the top – in others it’s a finer look that is visible. There are also some settling cracks, he admits.

The internal windows on the stairwell brings natural light in.

A view of the hall through to the living room

Upstairs, there is what Kelly describes as an inverted dormer within the corrugated steel roof, which is an anthracite shade, RAL 7016, one of the three standard farm supply colours available and so less expensive than using a custom colour. It has a plastic-coated finish to protect it from the elements.

He also made the 350sq m of exterior Siberian larch cladding, bevelling the edges to keep the rain off, again in his workshop on site. The timber has been attached to the concrete structure and appears to float. This allows air to circulate the battens, minimising rot and mould.

One of the many windows whose locations were selected to frame surrounding views.

The entrance hall, used as a gallery space to show off some of the furniture range. Pictured is a bench.

Upstairs, there is a Swiss chalet-style triangular west-facing balcony off the principal bedroom. In the opposite gable end, another window allows them to welcome the day’s morning light, too.

With the property now extending to 325sq m (3,500sq ft), this is a home where space is an everyday luxury.

“All of the furniture in the house is there for people to view,” he says. “It is in usable spaces so customers can see how it stands up to wear and tear in a real-life setting.” The pale wood furniture is in deliberate contrast to the dark wood exterior.

A view of the Swiss chalet-style covered balcony off the principal bedroom

Conor made the stairs and batten surrounds in his workshop

This is a business where you get to meet and see who you’re giving your money to. “You can see where everything is made and talk through what it is you’re looking for,” Kelly explains.

Repeat business accounts for half of his revenue.

“One client bought a diningroom table about a decade ago. They wanted another, bigger, wider version that also had leaves to extend it for large gatherings, such as Christmas. After they ordered it, they told us about their holiday home in Kerry that also needed a table.”

How does it feel to have been so hands-on with his home?

“It feels amazing and is a great source of pride to have done almost everything in it and on my family’s land. I don’t ever get tired of living in it,” he says.

He says it’s good for business too. “This lad built his own house and everything in it. It gives clients confidence that I’m going to make something beautiful for them,” he explains.

The dining table was made by Conor, and is a part of Snug furniture's new range

“It’s our ethos. We make things from wood that is local and burn a Snug stamp in each and every piece of furniture.”

Doing the sums

The extension work should have cost about €210,000 to get the place to a builder’s finish. He says he spent €170,000; €110,000 for materials such as concrete, roofing, timber cladding, and includes architect fees; €40,000 for plumbing, electrical, and block-laying; and €20,000 for bathroom fixtures and finishes. By doing the labour himself, including the concrete floors, he saved €40,000.

But a builder’s finish means that the entire interior still had to be done. He estimates that the gross cost for it, that is materials only, to do the kitchen cabinetry, stairs and its surround, band saw timber walls, utility room and units, larder and units, dining table, sideboards, consoles, and record cabinet, cost him €30,000 in materials, excluding his labour and time. For mere mortals to commission a joiner to do the same, he estimates the cost would be about €90,000.

Homeowners without such skills may pay a premium for everything. In today’s market, Alyn Chambers Architects says it is very difficult to predict costs and counsels anyone looking to renovate or extend to engage the services of a qualified quantity surveyor who has expertise in that particular type of build.

• Snug offers a fully bespoke kitchen service and is happy to work on any scale project. See the new range of furniture available to buy on snug.ie