DDIY in barcelona

Conviction and anticipation supplanted by anxiety, lethargy, and looking back, probably a touch of depression. All largely due to eight flights of stairs. The most constricted and precipitous stairs that you can envisage. The stairs to Hades, the Seventh Circle of Hell, and whatever place you regard as your personal hell rolled into one. Except the hellish direction of these stairs was up.

The idea was simple; take a tiny run down apartment and rejuvenate it. Reconfigure it to give more space for living, remove the disproportionately large bedroom, and ‘do it up a bit’. Remove a wall here, add a partition there. Strip the walls, fire in a new bathroom and kitchen. Paint it. Move in. Three months tops, probably less, and I’d have a place to live. In the sun, in the city, fifty metres from the beach.

I’ve always spent my time building things; now I was training to be an architect. What better way to test out my ideas than to build for myself, to take on a [very] small project and see what transpires. Even better if it means I have an excuse to live in Barcelona for a year or so.

It really was extremely small; thirty two square metres, subdivided into 2 bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a glorified cupboard, masquerading as a kitchen. One of the bedrooms was bigger than the living room, and the place just felt bad. It wasn’t falling down, but it obviously had received little attention since it was built. About 1930, if the deeds are anything to go by. So why did it turn into such a ruinous escapade?

Three reasons really. Firstly, you never know what you will find when you take paper or plaster off a wall. Secondly, what you do find means carrying a lot of stuff down and then a lot of stuff back up the aforementioned stairs. Finally, once you get to a certain point, there’s no turning back, and things may as well be done right.

Re-wiring was added to the plan. Some plumbing. Stripping back most of the walls. Then a new ceiling because it seems the entire thing is supported off the plaster on the walls and three particularly rusted nails. Replaster. More, more, more, more, more.

And the killer really was the stairs. Nearly everything carried either in or out via a sixty degree tunnel of pain. It adds up, takes its toll. But the strangest thing is I’d recommend it. Not the stair torture per se, but the process. Maybe not entirely alone if you can help it, but first hand experience of something like that teaches you so much. About the realities of building, about ideas of architecture, about yourself.

I’d heard of the concept of ‘under promise, over deliver’ before, but didn’t realise you could apply it to the duologue in your own head. The whole thing was a trip through the entire spectra of emotion, with despair being an unexpected detour. A process we’re all familiar with only magnified; and that’s part of the reason I’d recommend it. Because after all the pain, there was satisfaction. Immense satisfaction. Joy even. And a cool place to live for a while.

Sean Finan - 5th year MArch student

[image of Barcelona apartment taken by Roy Fitzpatrick]

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