Somewhere to come together.

We have three separate stays (the cottage and the two cabins), and what they didn’t have was a shared room. Somewhere to gather when the weather turns, which in Donegal it often does, or just to take time out from your own four walls for an evening. So we built one, and we made it free and open to everyone staying. Not a charged extra. A shared space, by design.

And we built it in the forge, which, when you think about what the forge always was, is exactly right. This was the busiest place for miles in my grandfather’s day: fishermen, farmers, men with gates to be mended, all about the place the whole day. It was always where people gathered. Now it is again.

Opening it up

We took the roof off and opened it to the view.

The forge had been closed in and dark. We took the roof off, put fresh rafters across, and poured a new insulated concrete floor. Then we broke a window out of the back wall to expose the view down and over the bay, and widened the one over the street, with a new lintel built above it.

Light came in from both ends. You can stand in the middle of the room now and see Mulroy Bay through one wall and the courtyard through the other. The bar runs along that bay window now; it has, arguably, the best view of the bay on the whole place.

Inside the forge shell on a bright day, the street-side window widened with a new lintel, Mulroy Bay glimpsed across the courtyard.

Opening up The street window widened, a new lintel built, the bay glimpsed beyond.

The stonework

The forge gable, left as we found it.

The gable wall of the forge is dry stone, and the photos show it close to its natural condition. There was very little to do here other than preserve it. The character was already in the wall, generations of it, and the job was not to undo that. It became the feature wall of the finished room without us changing what it was.

Close-up of the dry-stone forge gable, original stonework with a small vent opening and a fresh timber wall-plate above.

The gable The forge gable, preserved as found, the wall that became the room’s feature.

Watertight

A tongue-and-groove roof, and a dry room.

The roof went on next: built across the new rafters, then insulated, then the pale-pine tongue-and-groove fixed underneath it, a dark beam running across the centre. New windows and the door went in, and the room was watertight: the floor curing, light coming in, ready for the inside work to start.

The games-room interior with the pale-pine tongue-and-groove ceiling installed and a dark beam across the centre, walls still bare concrete.

Watertight The pine tongue-and-groove ceiling going on under the insulation.

The cladding

Then the burnt pine, at its best.

The walls are clad in burnt pine: charred tongue-and-groove, the black-and-amber finish that comes from scorching the timber. It’s the thing people notice first. Cladding the room in it, wall by wall, was the point the games room got its character: a dark, warm, close kind of room.

The technique is Japanese: shou sugi ban, also called yakisugi; you burn the surface of the timber to seal and finish it. We brought it to Donegal for these walls. After the burn the wood is washed down to take off the loose black residue, then given three coats of varnish to seal it in. What you’re left with is that deep grain-pattern brown in the photos.

Vertical burnt-pine tongue-and-groove cladding going up on the games-room walls, the pale ceiling and dark beam above.

The cladding The burnt-pine cladding going up, the finish that gives the room its character.

Close detail of the charred shou-sugi-ban pine cladding — distinctive black-and-amber burnt grain.

Burnt pine The charred tongue-and-groove, close up: black and amber.

The feature wall

And the dry-stone wall, pointed.

The one finishing touch the gable got was pointing (fresh mortar worked in between the old stone), and it sits at the back of the room between the burnt-pine walls. Old stone, charred timber, the pale ceiling above: that’s the whole material story of the room in one frame.

In the top-right corner of the gable there’s a small nook. We kept it and put a light in it, not knowing at the time what it would be for; it just felt like a feature worth keeping. It’s since earned its place: it now discreetly houses the Wi-Fi router, which broadcasts very fast Wi-Fi into the room.

The dry-stone feature wall at the back of the games room, preserved and freshly pointed, framed by charred-pine cladding under the pale-pine ceiling.

Feature wall The dry-stone feature wall pointed, between the charred-pine walls.

The shell, from outside

New windows in, the red door hung.

From the yard the building took its new shape: the openings squared up with fresh lintels, the windows in, the red door hung. The render and whitewash came later; here it’s still the bare, in-between state, which is most of what a renovation actually looks like.

The games-room exterior mid-renovation — new red door, new windows and fresh lintels in place, the walls not yet rendered or whitewashed.

From outside New windows and lintels in and the red door hung, render and whitewash still to come.

What goes in it

No pool table. Darts instead.

I’d wanted a pool table in here. But when we measured up, the room wouldn’t take one properly, only with short cues. I’m an avid pool player myself and I hate going around a pool table that doesn’t have enough space to use it. So that was that. I wasn’t going to put in a table you couldn’t play on.

Darts instead, an up-and-coming game, and one anyone in the family can pick up; there’s no real barrier to having a go. And not crowding the room with a pool table left space for the rest of it: the chess table, a growing library of board games, and the furniture we’re proudest of, made from whiskey staves. A pool table would have pushed all of that out.