When Petrina Shortt and Séamus Cox showed their contractor where they planned to build a house -- in place of a ramshackle hut atop sheer cliffs on Ireland's wind-battered southwest coast -- his response was unequivocal.

"He thought we were mad," said Shortt. "People around here tend to build more inland because of the winds and the rain, but we wanted a house right on the edge of the sea."

Ignoring their contractors' advice, the couple spent four years and about $800,000 building a light-filled coastal home with echoes of the site's past as a sea-urchin farm.

Shortt, a 50-year-old artist, and Cox, 51, who works in IT, are very much accidental home builders. Until they moved to the wilds of West Cork, they had spent most of their lives in Dublin.

In 2006 they bought a modest three-bedroom house in Dublin, imagining it was the starting point in a conventional journey up the real-estate ladder. The Irish economy was flourishing, said Shortt, and the investment felt like a no-brainer.

But the following year, the global financial crisis hit. Within two years their house was worth 50% less than they had paid for it, said Cox, then an IT project manager for an accounting firm. Although they both kept their jobs -- Shortt was an art teacher at the time -- they had to accept pay cuts.

"We could afford to pay our mortgage," said Cox, "but we couldn't afford to do anything but pay the mortgage."

In 2014 the couple decided drastic change was needed. Cox accepted a job with a bank in Saudi Arabia, and Shortt landed a job at a school there. They rented out their Dublin house and moved to the Middle East.

Returning to Ireland was always on the itinerary. While living in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the couple hatched a plan of buying themselves a small bolt-hole which they could use for visits home and -- one day -- retire to.

Their chosen location was West Cork, a place they had often visited and loved for its gorgeous landscapes, great food, and thriving cultural scene.

In 2017, having failed to find a cottage or farmhouse they really liked, the couple spotted an unprepossessing industrial building with a corrugated iron roof in Knockeens, some 70 miles west of Cork city.

The building had been used as a sea-urchin farm, but its owner was giving up the business and had been trying to sell the roughly 1-acre site for two years.

Shortt instantly fell in love with the location, with views across to the Sheep's Head Peninsula, but Cox initially had trouble picturing how the shed-like structure could be turned into a home.

Shortt prevailed, and in 2017 the couple paid about $250,000 for the hatchery.

Then, with the help of her architect sister, Caroline Shortt, founder of Barc Architects, they began the long, slow process of getting permission to replace the hatchery with a home. This meant getting the site rezoned from commercial to residential, and then selling the local planners on their vision for a contemporary 2,497-square-foot house clad in black corrugated metal.

"One planner said it was 'morose and alien,'" said Shortt. But she and Cox feel the dark, industrial style not only acknowledges the house's history but complements the rock, seas, and heathers surrounding it. On a practical note, the marine-grade cladding was also selected for its durability.

Eventually, in 2018, permits were in place and the build began.

To keep costs under control and minimize waste, the house was designed using the existing structure of the hatchery. The site did throw up engineering challenges -- the house had to be buttressed with steel to withstand local winds of up to 75 miles an hour. The exterior lighting is made from marine-grade plastic. "Anything else would just corrode because of the salt in the air," said Shortt.

For most of the build Shortt and Cox were in Saudi Arabia, monitoring it remotely and relying on Caroline and their contractor to keep them up-to-date with pictures and videos.

They had no idea when they might be able to return to live in the house. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

Shortt and Cox, who happened to be in Dublin for a visit, found themselves trapped in Ireland, working remotely. Realizing they didn't need to return to Saudi Arabia, they stayed in the West Cork area. They rented a place nearby to oversee the final months of the roughly $409,000 build, and moved into their three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in July 2020. The following year they embarked on phase two, spending about $139,000 to build an art studio for Shortt, who has given up teaching and is now a full-time painter.

The house has a study for Cox, who now has a hybrid role working for the Irish government, plus a store room "for the city clothes we never wear, " said Shortt.

The Dublin house finally recouped its value and was sold last year, and the city-bred couple have adapted easily to country life. The spend much of their time outdoors, walking George, their dog, and swimming from the small, rocky beach below their property. They also enjoy observing sea birds, dolphins in the bay, and the seal colony on the island across from the house. A resident otter has babies about three times a year.

"It is a million times better than we thought," said Shortt.