Complete DIY Plans to Build the Home in the Film "Herself" Are Available for Free

Carpenters use the adage "measure twice, cut once" as a reminder to double-check before committing—and it’s uttered by a character in the new film Herself (2020) to a group of novice builders. But it’s also an apt metaphor for the entire journey of Sandra (played by Clare Dunne), a single mother in Dublin trying to solve her housing problem. The saying cautions her to plan and prepare—then take action.

Having left her violent husband, Sandra has to declare herself homeless to qualify for government assistance. She is put up in an airport hotel, where she has to use the "poor door" to access the room she shares with her two daughters while she waits for her number 653 to come up on the public housing list. (Due to a dearth of available housing stock, Dublin has become one of the most expensive cities in the world—pricier than Tokyo, Sydney, and Singapore. Pre-pandemic, the number of people without housing had quadrupled in five years.)

After Googling "Self-Build + Ireland + cheap," she lands on irishvernacular.com, which offers free plans for a self-build home by architect Dominic Stevens. When Stevens built the original home for himself in 2008, it cost €25,000. Although Sandra makes a cogent argument to the city housing office that it would be a smarter, cheaper option for them to subsidize her construction than to pay for her lodging, the proposal is dismissed. But she pursues her quest with the help of a kindly contractor, a patron, and a ragtag group to build her dream house from scratch.

The tradition of building your own home might call up images of frontier homesteading in the U.S.—whether it’s a log cabin, a saltbox, or a bungalow. Similarly, Ireland has a rich history of DIY building—many construction laborers in the U.S. and U.K. were Irish "before they inherited the farm," Stevens says.

Stevens thought he was exhibiting a 1960s counterculture Whole Earth Catalog sensibility, but he soon discovered he had tapped into Ireland’s deeply rooted traditions. And both nations have communal building customs. In the U.S., we barn raise; In Ireland, it’s called Meitheal—a term proudly used in Herself.