You'll be razzle dazzled by the world of pure imagination at this €235k Carrigtwohill home 

WHOA! Prepare to be dazzled. Fully-baked eclectic maximalism is the order of the day at No 6 An Cliatháin, a deliciously capricious home that strenuously thumbs its nose at any notion of less being more.

It’s the more, the merrier, at this playful Carrigtwohill duplex where its owners, husband-and-wife duo Michelle O’Connell and Stephen O’Sullivan, take their inspiration from the likes of Margaret and Corey Bienert, a US couple whose passion for photographing kitsch hotels has spawned a viral TV travel series.

Michelle, who describes her style as “eclectic maximalism or dopamine décor” has a natural theatricality that shapes her approach to home décor, all of which is informed by a great deal of research and meticulous attention to detail. Hotel Kitsch, by the Bienerts, is in her coffee table book collection and the 2022 US reality TV series documenting the transformation of the Trixie Motel in California’s Palm Springs by drag queen Trixie Mattel fed into her own creativity when she set about decorating 20-year-old No 6, which the couple bought in late 2021.

“Through the Bienerts and Trixie Motel, I got very interested in eclectic maximalism and the idea of every room having its own theme and colour,” she says.

When it comes to picking up vintage bits, she’s a big fan of flea markets, such as Mother Jones on York Street in Cork city, but she’s also open to buying from more conventional stores such as Homesense or Ikea, or The Range in nearby Little Island, where she says she’s “on first name terms with the staff”.

“If I see an idea that I like, I spend hours researching it,” she says.

The polar opposite of RTÉ’s Home of the Year judge, Amanda Bone, for whom more is mess, thoughts of monochrome greys and beiges give Michelle the heebee jeebees.

“I’m a millennial and I feel like a lot of my peers go for beige and grey with a pop of sage green. It’s not for me. I wanted to use as much colour as possible in the house, everything from the doors to the architraves.” Michelle has a useful tip too for anyone undertaking the tricky job of painting a staircase.

“Get a tanning mitt. It was my dad’s idea. He used it in another house before we tried it in my house and it worked out quite well,” she says.

The feedback she gets from guests to their home is that it “feels like a cool hotel”. In line with her Hotel Kitsch style, there are neon signs scattered about, including in the couple’s bedroom where the neon above the bed reads “Till Death do us Party”.

Her husband, a software engineer, made it for their wedding and they held onto it for their bedroom at No 6. Stephen, a big comic book fan, and a lover of board games, has a home office in the second bedroom.

“We’ve a pull-out bed that we use when guests stay, but it’s mainly his home office,” Michelle says. Guests love their bathroom, where the orange walls are hung with photos of famous bathroom scenes from well-known movies.

 “People like to guess which movies they are from,” she says. The toilet roll holder is a replica of the vintage Polaroid Land Camera, delivering up loo roll instead of instant prints.

Another talking point is the flamboyant zebra stair carpet, which Michelle spotted as a stair runner on Amazon.

“I got onto the company that supplies Amazon and asked them if they could add a few extra feet to the runner to fit the staircase, so they did,” she says.

When she spots ideas that she likes, she banks them until the time is right. For instance the theatrical masks that function as door knobs on her kitchen units were inspired by brooches made by one of her favourite designers, Italian fashion house, Maison Schiaperelli.

“Those Schiaperelli brooches cost around €11,000, so I took a picture for wholesalers in China and asked them to recreate them as a door handle, although not a total copy (to avoid copyright infringement),” Michelle says. The units themselves are painted in “industrial strength” Farrow & Ball, she adds.

The era of TikTok has been a godsend for ideas, says Michelle, although she admits that some things “didn’t work”.

“If you don’t like it, all you have to do is re-paint it,” she says. This was the can-do attitude behind the couple’s decision to buy the two-bedroom duplex in the first place.

“A lot of people overlooked this property when it came on the market. They just saw the magnolia walls and dark kitchen. But I could see there was lots to play with: a good B2 energy rating and a good location, just an eight minute walk from the train station in Carrigtwohill. “ As Michelle, who works in social housing, travels regularly into Cork city and upto Dublin for work, convenience to the train station was ideal.

Herself and Stephen are only moving on because they feel under pressure for space, as both of them do remote working.

“My parents are from Kerry and when they stay over, they have to be up and out of the room early as it’s also Stephen’s home office. Plus I have so many handbags, they would fill a room by themselves,” she laughs.

They’ll miss No 6. “It was a great starter home, it was the home we were in when we got engaged, got married and started in new jobs. And at 915 sq ft, it’s not a bad size.” As a consolation prize for leaving it behind, the couple intend to take their long awaited honeymoon in Ibiza next year, staying in hotels recommended by the Bienerts, whose latest series focuses on kitsch lodgings on the Spanish island.

James Colbert of Colbert & Co is selling No 6 and he says it’s “one of the most interesting houses we have brought to market in recent years”.

“I have two days of viewings booked in and they are choc-a-block. There’s terrific’s interest,”he says, adding that there’s Ducon concrete flooring for the prevention of noise between the two floors and that the house is fitted for 6G internet and has Alexa remote control lights.

In a well-established residential neighbourhood in Carrigtwohill’s Cúl Ard, it’s adjacent to the N25 Cork to Waterford route, as well as close to schools and to Carrigtwohill village.

It comes to market at the starter home guide price of €235,000.

VERDICT: Hold your breath, make a wish, count to three, it’s a world of pure imagination.