'WE WANTED to revamp our house and add an extension and someone recommended an architect to us, but we weren't happy with what he proposed even though we couldn't quite put our finger on it," says Kevin Prendergast who has now added 93sq m (1,000sq ft) to his north-east Dublin home.

"Then someone told us about the Simon Open Door day and that we could get an hour's advice for €50 (now €75). We thought that sounded brilliant and said: 'How bad can it be? Let's do it.' The fact that it was for the Simon Community was even better.

"We spent an hour with Sandra Campbell and Paul Quinn from BKD Architects and it was fantastic. They were buzzing, and were so excited about the whole thing, that I even asked: 'Don't you ever get bored with this?'

"The ideas and the layout they came up with was genius, as was the use of space. What they said made sense."

Prendergast had planned a single storey extension to the rear of his house and a small extension to the side. "They proposed a toilet and utility room, and a door to the garden so that we wouldn't have to carry wet clothes through the new extension. They also suggested roof lights so this space works brilliantly now.

"I wanted a lot of glazing but Paul suggested having slightly less because we would lose too much heat. They also suggested moving a wall in our front room, which had become a dead space, to give more floor area to the kitchen and diningroom in the extension. They reworked an awkward plan for stairs that made them turn better."

Prendergast took the architects' advice and then saw through the building work on his own, not something that many architects would recommend. "The whole thing is very well laid out and there is fantastic use of space; even the builder commented on it and said he would copy the design from now on."

Prendergast says that he had always been fairly sure about what he wanted and felt the first person they consulted didn't really listen. "These two listened to our needs and were so enthusiastic."