Siobhán O’Mahony and her partner, Timmie O’Brien, bought the former post office in Butlerstown in west Cork with a dream of converting it into their forever home.
But their plans stalled, and O’Mahony says appearing on RTÉ’s The Great House Revival appealed to her, as they were “so long trying to get it finished, I needed to put a fire under someone’s backside!”
In June 2023, Hugh Wallace came to visit and filming began, culminating in the tasteful renovation of the property.
“We just assumed when the show was finished we wouldn’t really see him again. But we kept a really strong friendship up with him. He’d ring, he’d text – I did an event in west Cork on renovations and he came down and hosted it with me.”
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“I don’t know how he had the time for everybody,” she says. “He was just such a charming man.”
Looking back, the architect offered the family some good tips.
He suggested that they didn’t put a wall upstairs, and leave it instead as an open playroom.
“It was a brilliant idea,” says O’Mahony. Another of his ideas was to blow the wall out of the kitchen and build a terrace. To mark it, the couple had the idea of creating a plaque in his honour, to commemorate the “Hugh Wallace Terrace”.
Wallace loved the idea, and was planning to come down for the unveiling.
Will they still go ahead with the plaque?
“One hundred per cent,” says O’Mahony, adding that she’d love Wallace’s husband, Martin, to come down and open the terrace, in due course.
[ Hugh Wallace radiated sheer joy on the screen. His death leaves a huge gulfOpens in new window ]
One tip they did not take on board was a recommendation that they move the bathroom. O’Mahony says the last time Wallace was down, he came for dinner in their home, and he went upstairs and said “Thank God you didn’t listen to me!”
“He’d be like that. He’d always give you the credit where he thought you deserved it,” she says.
Kieran Cotter featured on the last episode of the last series. The Kerryman had recently returned from living abroad, when he decided to renovate his grandmother’s old cottage.
He was attracted to the programme because he wanted to promote the small village where he’s from, Knocknagoshel. Cotter started the renovation in the spring of 2022, before going at it full-time in 2024.
“I quit my job to work on the house full time and moved back in with my parents. It took a bit of sacrifice, but it was a very enjoyable year to be fair”. Wallace helped him with the layout, the history and old building techniques.
“There was always good craic to be had, and he was always respectful. He was a one of a kind character,” says Cotter, adding, “He liked the ambition and naivety I had. I think he found it entertaining”.
In Westport, Karen Whyte and her husband, Donnacha Curley, appeared on the second series of the show, renovating their 1770s home, Grove House, from an empty and damp wreck into a jewel-toned haven.
The programme aired in 2020, but they kept up the friendship with Wallace beyond that.
[ Step inside an 18th-century historic Mayo homeOpens in new window ]
“We’re in shock. I can’t believe he’s gone. I was only talking to him about two weeks ago,” Whyte says, adding that Wallace had been in touch because he was coming to the town to do some filming and wanted to meet up.
“He stayed here with us a couple of times, whenever he was in the area,” she says, adding that he was “a dote of a man”.
“He was so kind, with such twinkly sparkly eyes. He was so self-deprecating, with zero airs and graces. He was brilliant and will absolutely be missed”.
The first time they met set the tone for their relationship.
It was a really windy stormy day in Westport when he first visited the house, and the couple were nervous.
But, after falling in the front door, Wallace laughed and said “we’d better do that again”.
“It just put us at such ease,” she says.
Do they recall any of his design tips?
“He used to say, ‘will I give you tips that I know you’re going to ignore?’” she laughs, but says his recommendation to use Farrow & Ball Brinjal paint, a deep aubergine colour, in the hallway, was one that stuck.
“He was so affable; in all the time that I saw him here, sometimes it was really pressurised, he never once raised his voice, or had a strop.”
