“Have they bitten off more than they can chew?”

Speeder, that’s Facit homes. They’re doing well and are very busy by all accounts.

I think with the Architects, the more realistic story is the clients didn’t want to pay for more than planning drawings which, surprisingly, weren’t enough to build off.

Oh, this episode has everything bar the baby so far.

Time yet

I’m 5 mins in, knobbers.

Must be hard being well heeled.

Not being funny, but that bridge should of been factored in for the movement of materials

And the mud mansion man

I haven’t seen many of these but I do remember this one. Although I didn’t see the end! I remember that it kept raining and the mud/straw blocks wouldn’t dry.

Did he ever finish the mud mansion?

Sometimes when watching these programmes I feel a flicker of sympathy amongst all the schadenfreude ……. Not this week.

Swelper – Member
Must be hard being well heeled.

I think the problem is, they aren’t.

Kids are knobbers too.

And lolz at the storm.

60 years until the cliff erosion means the house falls into the sea. Oh hang on a minute. One nights storm this February brings 15 years worth of erosion.
Oh dear.

Who’s going to clear up the mess when it falls into the sea? Especially if it happens in 50 years time when they’re dead.

should have built it on wheels so they can keep pulling it back from the edge. Didn’t NASA sell their orbiter transport thingy the other year?

Bloody idiots, the pair of them! No idea of erosion and it’s variability, no idea about factoring access issues in which all the tender’s probably did. Hopeless & council should never have granted planning permission.

Nice house built in a daft place.

I couldn’t understand why the council wouldn’t grant permission to put erosion defences in?

Hideous. 😐

Awesome house, shit location.

I couldn’t understand why the council wouldn’t grant permission to put erosion defences in?

They are probably trying to discourage people from being idiots and building in unsustainable places.

What a pair of nobbers! Building so close to a cliff, bloody big white/glass box and no blinds. Add in the piss poor planning re the bridge.

Have little liking for many of the people who star in Grand Designs but few have irritated me as much.

just watching on +1. How on earth are those balancing rocks going to cope with a stiff wind?

Glad I missed it,

Couple seemed alright to me, seen far more irritating people on GD. I liked the house and, whilst it seemed foolish to build so close to the edge, I hope it at least lasts their lifetimes

I actually quite liked the idea of having a home in such a location but I’d have built something far less substantial and more temporary given the risks

Utter madness. I feel for them, it’s like they had no voice of dissent and talked each other into it. Flooding and erosion is my job and we’re anticipating an increase in the frequency of events like last winter.

The council & NRW won’t let them defend because it’s pointless. They’d just end up with a promenantry unless they defended the whole stretch.

Leaving aside the long* term suitability of the location, the house was very pretty in a “we haven’t the imagination not to rip off Mies van de Rohe” way.

Much as I love modernist architecture, I could never bring myself to build a pastiche (albeit a very nice example) of something from over half a century ago.

Oh, and I just watched the last 10 minutes. Solved the ****-eejit-blood-pressure interface.

*short

I really want to see an episode where someone builds a smart but modest home in a forest and spends the majority of his/her money basically building a trail centre. That would be good TV.

Range Rover? Check. Small budget that suddenly is hundreds of thousands of pounds off? Check. They instantly get the funds from nowhere. Check. Vanity project that they didn’t need to live in? Check. Everything white? Check.

Nice to see GD working to form.

Loved the fact that “we ran out of money” so he had to go back to work for TWO MONTHS to raise over £200k. How profitable was his business?

Basically a couple able to spaff what looked like £1m just to get on tv.

Here you go mudpackerdan (apologies for Ed Leigh content):

[video]http://youtu.be/pGZ6ZgPc8Ok[/video]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/25683959

On Grand Designs, I though it was a pretty tame episode, they didn’t particularly annoy me, and as much as I dislike white box archtechture, I thought the house was quite well done.

It may not be brilliant but it is a hell of a lot better than some ex (so called) celebrity dancing, diving off a diving board, sitting in a house all day etc.

Thanks for the heads up OP.

I want to know, did Kev look down his nose at the camera, then smirk?

Thats all I want to know.

Were their huge windows imported from Germany? At enormous expense? Which then didn’t fit?

Funny how a petrochemical researcher and an events manager have no idea about the potential of climate change.

It would have been good to see the rock balancer actually balance some rocks too.

Unfortunately not. Money goes to money eh, just invest £50k and start making a profit instantly! Money they spaffed on windows would be enough to make me go part time…

Next weeks looks promising if it truly is a self build.

monkeyfudger – Member
Unfortunately not. Money goes to money eh

Absolutely, I think this is often the lesson of Grand Disasters, although I always preferred this version of the same idea:

Gordon Gecko – notamember

A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.

I found last nights episode pretty dull. These concrete and glass structures are hardly cutting edge architecture.

Anyway what I didn’t understand was the door ‘incident’ at the end when they went downstairs. She had to tell him how to open it and then she didn’t know how to close it. How can you not know how to work a door in your own house? It gave the impression they didn’t live in it.

I couldn’t understand why the council wouldn’t grant permission to put erosion defences in?

because they manage the coast as a whole. You defend one spot and it just increases the erosion elsewhere. or just erodes around the side of it.

It would have been good to see the rock balancer actually balance some rocks too.

I was in Criccieth (where this week’s house is… for now) earlier this year and the rock balancer was doing his stuff on the beach. Not to that scale, but there were plenty of magically balanced 18” pebble towers knocking about. It was like Blair Witch meets Cockle Shell Bay.

This geezer has some very nice work clothes 😆
And it would appear little knowledge 😯

Why are they only building a 2 bed house? I’d have thought that a bedroom each for their kids would be more useful than a boot room and study?

Bet it creaks in a breeze