{"id":419607,"date":"2026-04-27T07:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419607\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T07:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:51:09","slug":"the-highs-and-lows-of-an-older-home-we-talk-about-houses-in-terms-of-efficiency-and-output-as-though-they-should-function-like-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419607\/","title":{"rendered":"The highs and lows of an older home: \u2018We talk about houses in terms of efficiency and output, as though they should function like machines\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Moving into an 1940s house revealed fragments of the past\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Emer Roche in her refurbished home. Photo: Steve Humphreys\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SF EMER ROCHE 3SH.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Emer Roche in her refurbished home. Photo: Steve Humphreys<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I like the heaviness that settles over the first months of the year. The long nights and short winter light suit slower routines and early starts. I typically like to take this time slowly, so it was slightly surprising to find myself renovating a 1940s terraced house \u2013 stripping it back and rebuilding it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Luckily, at this point, I was ignorant of the endless torrent of rain about to fall over the island, making even the most optimistic of hearts falter slightly at heavy paint not drying and endless drips of condensation forming on single-pane glass. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moving into an 1940s house revealed fragments of the past Emer Roche in her refurbished home. Photo: Steve&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,6992],"class_list":["post-419607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-people-culture-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}