Right, guys, come on, you're not playing that game for the evening. So what else do you want to do? No, it's my turn.

Make it easy on yourself, Tom. Just leave them at it. No, we said we're going to make more a family time and we're sticking to it. OK, tell it off, please.

Come help me get the dinner ready. Then one of you can pick a game without a screen that we can all play.

Things might be tough these days, but when it comes to raising healthy kids, big wins start with small changes, make the most of family time and a healthy habit today find more ways to start living healthier and make a start date, i.e. brought to you by, say, food to the HSC and Healthy Ireland.

Let's go to Karen McCarthy now. He's the co presenter of Cheap Irish Homes and he's a builder with 25 years experience.

Karen, how are you? Good morning, Jonathan. How are you doing? I am very well, thank you, Karen. We've been asking for people's questions throughout the morning. Is the time of year where you're kind of wondering what your January project is going to be or something that you've been looking to do to the house because you've spent nine months looking at it and there are lots of people now thinking of adding to their home, changing their home, or maybe starting from scratch.

Well, I suppose there are really I mean, we've we've all been stuck at home for for a long time. And I suppose our worlds have shrunk a bit because of lockdown and restrictions or whatever. You so so as what the home becomes the new focus. So sort of there's definitely potential in your home to to improve it. You know, what is the advice for someone starting off?

Because everybody has grand notions and they've seen lots of television, but you have to kind of grounded in reality. So how would you go about doing that?

Well, I suppose like the first key elements that are going to restrict you, which are which are always the first things I look at, are planning permission and your budget. So like from planning permission point of view, depending on how elaborate a project you're willing to take on. But from a planning point of view, you can build you can likely build something onto the back of your house as long as it isn't visible from the front within 40 square metres.

And from a budget point of view, I mean, look where you're starting. I mean, in the construction related costs, cost of terabits. So so there'd be certainly the first few things I'd be looking at, you know.

So when you have the the planning permission side of a budget, everybody has as a finite amount of cash.

So how do you make a go as far as possible?

Well, the first thing I would look at is the budget. So, I mean, like, if you're if you're looking to build an extension and the the more there's a few things that that will that will drive your your budget spend. One is the complexity of what you're building. So like, is it a square shape or is it a L shape or are has it got round walls or whatever. But so, so complexity will certainly drive budget.

And, and when you're looking at your extension, how your exchange relates back onto the existing building, have you to you to knock several walls, you have to put in a steel beam to create a kind of an open space. You know, what are the ramifications for your heating system? And you need to bring, you know, radiators already on the floor heating more complex, complex again into your new extension. So so these are key budget drivers.

And of course, the size the extension will will, will will cause additional budget to spend as well.

There's always concern about fads. And there was a fad for a long time. Everything had to have a box attached to it. Didn't matter what shape the house was. A box was being plonked on the site. Is that still the fad or do people need to be cautious about doing that?

I think like the the overall design, I didn't call it the floor space design hasn't changed in the last eight, 10 years.

And I think you did. The House improvement shows on TV have certainly brought a lot of new ideas to the fore there. I suppose it's more the kind of elevation or treatment that people are changing. But no, the the pure and the pure and the contemporary look has probably moved a little bit. And people are looking for a kind of a bit of kind of a classical look. So that's that's quite a bit I like. The most important thing when you're designing extension isn't just to think of what could I put in the extension?

It's more like what space do I currently have? What space do I need and how do I create the additional space? You might be annexing another room into the kitchen space to to do that way. Or it might need an extension. But I look at in the context of the overall space that you have and how to improve that was what with the extension itself, the you know.

OK, question here from listener. I've secured a family site with an old cottage, one part of it over one hundred years old, but the newer parts about sixty years old. My plan is a new build on the site and maintain some parts of the cottage. But the question is, could maintaining part of the cottage end up costing a lot more than knocking and building from scratch? And secondly, what about planning? So that sounds like a perfect one for cheapy resouces, which is the TV show you were on.

What would you recommend, that Leonardos?

Yeah, well, generally speaking, if you have a choice between renovating an existing home or building a new home, it will tend to be more cost effective to renovate an existing home because you have a. More and more upfront costs in building a new home, but when you're when you're renovating existing home, obviously there's only so far you can go because you've got to work within the confines of some somewhat least of the walls that you currently have. So if the question of new versus existing, you would generally renovate an existing house for less than building a new.

But there are constraints when it comes to building a new house. Planners can take a view that would like to keep an existing house if it's there, and you could use it as maybe a home office or are, you know, a kind of ancillary use of the house. So so that that comes down a different going to come to a different county. It's very a little bit on how they deal with that. So I would certainly talk to a local planner on that.

You want a quick one if we can, please. Karen, is there a rough guide figure for renovating a suburban CBD in Dublin? What should I expect to spend for a full refit so that someone who's gone all out?

It really depends on what they want. You can do it for reasonable.

You can spend you control the entire budget of a small African country until it's up to what you want to do with it, isn't it? It is, yeah.

I suppose what you've what you find is people really just renovate the house. I mean, renovate no means upgrade the existing and extend it. No, I'm not hugely familiar with talking prices, but I know there is, you know, significantly above Clarke Price, which I used to. What I mean, like there was a time when you could do two storey extension on your house for 100 grand. But I mean, no, you're 200 plus and heading towards the big three for a lot of these projects.

So and then you look at that and go, well, look, you couldn't have built a new house for something approaching this and, you know, you're not a million miles off it. But but these projects have become very elaborate. But again, if it's just a renovation of the house and painting it and, you know, getting insulation, you could do a lot for under 100, you know, so it really depends on what you're doing and how much you're extending the house by, you know, and make sure you talk to someone who knows what they're doing, such as Karen Karen McCarthy, builder and presenter of Cheap Irish Houses on A.R.T. One.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Mom, can I have crisps now, come on, Sophie, you know the answer to please. Oh, it's Saturday. I'm at. No, we said family activities were going to be our weekend treats from now on, I'm sticking to just wanting to tell you what, get your brother grab a banana and we'll go to the park for an hour instead.

OK, things might be tough these days, but when it comes to raising healthy kids, big wins start with small changes, make the most of family time and a healthy habit today find more ways to start living healthier and make a start daily brought to you by, say, food to the HSC and Healthy Ireland.