Home of the Year episode 5: Visiting the Irish answer to LA, confronting the Cave of Creativity and hiding in a toilet

Anyway, this was a pretty big week. We saw our first flat of this series — OK, a duplex apartment, but we’re desperate here. And we got not one piano but two. Talk about exciting.

Also, the judges seemed in better form. Amanda bore up bravely when confronted with Tríona’s Cave of Creativity (don’t ask; I am getting a bit Amanda myself). Hugh stole marshmallows and hid in a guest bathroom, also known as a toilet.

And Sara said: “We’re in Offaly but, to be honest with you, I felt we could be in LA.”

That is a sentence that you do not hear very often on Irish television.

Even Tríona knew there were going to be problems with her Co Kildare duplex. She’s a maximalist. We were told that in recent years she has returned from Vietnam, although we were not told what she was doing there. Anyway, now she is a primary school teacher and has more draping, upholstery, painted furniture and cushions than you could shake a stick at. The fridge had a pattern applied to it, which is a good idea when you think about it. Also there was a white piano. It wasn’t going to end well.

Tríona’s love of her home was obvious. Even Amanda liked the kitchen, which looked wonderful. Sara said the light fittings were too low. Only Hugh seemed to enjoy Tríona’s home in the same way that Tríona enjoyed it herself.

Happiness descended when the judges reached Rebecca and Eamonn’s transformed bungalow in Offaly. Rebecca has a baby grand piano and, in what may be a first for lifestyle television, she was filmed playing it, albeit with no sound. Truly the ways of Home of the Year are mysterious.

There was a brief disruption when Hugh and Amanda clashed over what Amanda said were unnecessary architraves. It was at this point that Hugh pretended to hide in the discreetly hidden downstairs toilet, which probably had lots of storage space.

I wonder about the Hugh-Amanda clashes: are they manufactured?

I’m also wondering about house plants — or home plants as we must surely call them. Do some of them look suspiciously…. new? If Home of the Year was going to force its way into my house, I would rush out immediately and buy a wall of banana plants, and hang the expense.

Back in what passes for reality television, Amanda wants the world painted white and the earth covered in a single floor material from the North to the South Pole. So she was always going to love Rebecca and Eamonn’s very attractive home.

Yet it was Sinead and John’s home, a 100-year-old suburban house in Belfast, that was potentially the most interesting. This was because, as John pointed out, the couple had done everything themselves. Now, the obvious questions to follow this statement are, “HOW? How did you guys do everything yourselves? What exactly did you do? And how come you’re still married at the end of it?”

But there were no questions. Amanda got antsy about the floor covering in the hall. The kitchen was a flashpoint for all three judges. Modern Irish kitchens, said our architect, are all the same, and so it proved on this week’s episode — except for Tríona’s. All modern Irish kitchens have an island and a big picture window. And this is where I got offended because that’s what my kitchen has.

In Belfast, the judges thought Sinead and John’s island was too big and that their little bistro-style table was too small. Do they not understand that Sinead and John are too busy paying off the mortgage to have people over? Or that, if they do have people over, everyone will eat at the island? Sometimes I wonder where the judges eat when they’re in their own homes, but that is unhealthy speculation.