On the cover… of IHIL! and where we’re going next.
September started off with a bang! After a lovely few weeks summer break with my girls, we got back to school (some of us only starting school!) and work, which hit me like a tonne of bricks. However the dread didn’t last long with the release of the IHIL October edition on the 1st September. I was eagerly awaiting its release all summer, as I knew my Connemara Cottage project was to be featured (I say that like it was an accident, as if a lot of hard work didn’t go into getting it there!)
It was a normal Tuesday afternoon in our house, we had just finished doing homework and I had dinner cooking, when ‘I got a text’!. The photographer had text me an image of the magazine in his hands with the words ‘congrats!’. I was confused and excited - its out! Its hit the shelves! Wait, is that the cottage on the front? THATS THE COTTAGE ON THE FRONT! With dinner almost ready I couldn’t abandon it and head straight to the shop, so I had to sit and eat and explain to my children why I couldn’t sit still. Luckily they were excited as I was, wolfed down their dinner and we all rushed into the car because ‘mommy is famous and we’re so proud of you!’ Anyway seeing it on the shelfes was kind of surreal. When I started this journey I remember picking up magazines wondering how you get to that stage where you get your work in print for the nation to see. And here I was with my work on the cover!
The energy it gave me was unreal, the next day I had an emotional hangover, kind of like the feeling after your first therapy visit (iykyk!). But having it propped proudly behind my desk has given me the drive to keep going. I had decided over the summer, that the best direction for my business was to focus on one area of the home only, and that is bathrooms. It almost seems like a silly move after having a whole home project being featured, but doing a whole home on your own is not easy let me tell you! Over the years I realised how much I enjoy doing bathrooms, how creative I get to be in these spaces, and how much of a gap there is in the bathroom design market. I want to deliver bathrooms that restore the people that use them, beyond what is currently available. And so I’m taking a turn off the beaten track, and I can’t wait to see where this path leads.
Get your October addition of IHIL on the shelves now!
Niamh x
