Interior designer Elizabeth O'Connor on how she used bold colours in the home she bought a year ago, writes EMMA CULLINAN

Interior designer Elizabeth O’Connor runs O’Connor Design Partners in Leopardstown, Dublin, with her mother Angela. Elizabeth is married to builder Martin Linnane. With their daughter Eliza they live in a 1960s house in Stillorgan.

What attracted you to the house?

The area was really important to us. I wanted Eliza to go to the crèche across the road and then the local national school. Deerpark is 10 minutes’ walk away, the Luas is 15 minutes’ walk and we are beside Dundrum. I am five minutes’ from my office. Most of Martin’s work is outside Dublin and this is close to the M50.

We wanted a house from this period or older because we think they are better built. This has good solid walls, it is structurally sound, and the rooms are the right size for us. We wanted to extend and this had a good-sized back garden.

Were you in the house while the work was being done?

No, we stayed in our old house for six months. We didn’t close the sale on that house until last August.

What did you do to this house?

We added a small extension just for time being, to put the kitchen in, and we converted the front garage into an office and downstairs loo. We had to line the garage and remove an asbestos roof and put a new one on.

The kitchen came out of another house that Martin was working on. A carpenter who works for him measured up the old units and made it all fit in perfectly. I had the kitchen painted and put new handles on it.

I didn’t want to spend money on the kitchen because we plan to build a new extension here and the kitchen will all come out. It is not the world’s most perfect design but it is fine for us now.

We plan to build a two-storey extension to the side, and extend to the back on one level to have a big open-plan living space. But it cost enough to buy the house and do the initial work so we will hang on for a few years.

Did you knock any walls down?

Yes, there used to be a wall between the kitchen and diningroom on the ground floor which we knocked. We moved doorways too because we wanted the whole ground floor to flow and now you can walk all the way around the ground floor – from room to room – without going into the hall.

I’ve also tied the ground floor together in the colour scheme. I’ve used shades of bone, blue and yellow to link the fabric and wallpaper and to give a feeling that everything is interconnected. For instance, the curtain pattern in the diningroom is the same as the wallpaper in the livingroom and the kitchen blinds use the same colours as the hall wall.

I like using colour – there is colour everywhere although in the bedrooms upstairs things are a bit more muted.

The floors are all timber too. There was carpet everywhere which had been in the house for 40 years but we wanted wooden floors downstairs. We put carpet upstairs.

Were you not daunted by the work that needed doing?

We are used to it – in our business we frequently work together. The first job we did together was in our last house in Drimnagh and you learn quickly and get used to it.

You learn from mistakes. I will definitely always double-check planning regulations now. In our other house we didn’t check before we put in an upstairs window and we had to close it up.

You have the ability to see past the bits you don’t like?

Yes. We could see the potential of this house straight away. We can both walk into a room with bad décor and dodgy colours and see beyond that. Nothing had been done to this house and it had been kept perfectly. We loved the sense of space, the high ceilings and large hall.

Where did you get the furniture in the livingroom?

The family selling the house said that if I wanted the furniture I could have it, they would have just put it in a skip. I loved the shape of the furniture and by keeping it I could retain some of the character of house and be true to its age.

I reupholstered the sofa, armchair and another chair. They were originally upholstered in old-fashioned Dralon. Having them in brighter colours gives them a new lease of life. I covered the big sofa in Jane Churchill flame stitch fabric. A lot of companies would have been making flame stitch fabric in the 1950s and it’s back.

The room had heavy vinyl brown wallpaper with pink flowers on it and the fireplace had high-glazed mustard tiles surrounded by lots of brown. It did nothing for the room so we changed it to something that won’t date. I like reusing things and bringing old pieces back to life. I also like to mix and match: the bookcase is brand new – it came from Kube in Sandyford – and everything else is pretty much older pieces.

My mum got the coal bucket at auction and the 1930s clock came from my grandparents’ house in Limerick.

There are new curtains and lighting, which I bought in Stillorgan Décor (where most lights in the house came from).

I used the Romo wallpaper to add a bit of interest and had flower pictures made from pieces of 1950s fabric that I got on eBay and had framed.

So you’ve done it all in a year?

No, we still need more furniture but we are not rushing it. I want side tables and others bits and pieces but we are waiting to find the right pieces. We will take time and look around to see what comes up in the auctions.

As with the furniture in the house, if I find a piece of furniture at auction in the right shape then I will have it polished, restained or painted.

I’ve got a pair of bedside lockers and a dressing table that came with the house that I am going to have sprayed, probably in an off-white cream, and will put new handles on them.

You are brave with wallpaper

I love wallpaper. I originally painted the hall but it was not working out. Because it was a high space it needed something more dramatic and I realised that I could make a lot more of it so I chose a wallpaper by a Swedish company called Sandberg.

Do you use your home to experiment on?

I do use my own home to try things out on but I decorate not by thinking how it should look but by how we like to live and what works well. I also do that for clients: very much looking at how they live and what suits their home.