Struggling to find anything I liked about that. An ugly building in ugly immediate surroundings and a messy, I’ll-considered interior.

The spiral staircase was nice (probably one of their biggest single expenses) – but hidden in that awful concrete.

Mrs S-S made the point that rebuilding the concrete grain silos probably cost more than wacking a stud wall up. False economy recyling.

and bloody ugly.

I liked the farmhouse though. Wish we saw more of that.

I liked it. At least its not yet another modern glass box/shopping centre

I liked most of the stuff they’d collected too, especially the robots. 🙂

I quite liked it too. Wouldn’t want to live in it, and there was lots to not like, but I liked the approach they took.

Mrs S-S made the point that rebuilding the concrete grain silos probably cost more than wacking a stud wall up. False economy recyling.

Isn’t recycling not simply about pound/shilling/pence savings?
I like open spaces but that was biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig. Too much wood for me too, inmteresting roof idea too. A huge amount of money, I hope they’ve got something left for heating.

I hope they’ve got something left for heating.

They have got lots of wood…

😉

I like it, well apart from the ridiculous amount of concrete in the floor, not very eco, and the toilet without a roof so everyone can hear your morning constitutional isn’t great either.
would happily live in that as it’d be great to be just next door in the workshop.

When they said some things cannot be done, for example keeping the gable end wall with the light streaming through it, I just thought that with a bit of immagination they could have lined it with a glass curtain wall. And then I fell asleep 🙁

I was a bit meh about it, but keep coming back to the £850k it cost and then it leaves me feeling profoundly depressed. EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS, they could have done so much better.

Going to have to fire up 4-OD as I obviously missed a good one!!

I bet the vast, vast majority of the £850k went on repairing the wood frame itself.

jeepers what a bunch of conventional bores you lot are!
yeah they had too much cash and she was a bit annoying but it was very inventive and interesting and challenges the idea everyone in this country seems to have about how its ok to live in pastiche mock georgian/victorian/edwardian noddy toy town boxes!

Fenboy why you hating the Barrett Travel lodge style? 😉

LoCo, they conform to the lowest possible standards of spatial quality, aspiration and lack any thought and with the change to planning laws will be popping up in fields near you all once the economy starts moving again! 😕

challenges the idea everyone in this country seems to have about how its ok to live in pastiche mock georgian/victorian/edwardian noddy toy town boxes!

It is ok to live like that. 🙂

I’d argue that if you feel that you have to actively try to be different by doing something way out then you’re actually probably more conventional in mind than those who don’t need to try to be special to feel special.

Of course, the people who really are inventive/interesting may well do things very different but not in an attempt to be so.

as i said the building in the programme challenges this notion no matter whether thats the participants actual motivation or not. and born out by the majority of comments above.

if you draw an analogy to mountainbikes, we all upgrade constantly and are consistently drawn to the latest design led innovations all of which happen to enhance the experience of mountainbiking. Then why shouldn’t we strive to enhance the experience of living by seeking out the best designed homes we possibly can! which the average developer led housing development is not! and the issue of cost does not come into it as you can build a well designed home for the same price as a poorly designed one.

thats all i’m saying as i’m off to enhance some peoples living experience

fenboy, see my first post, they won’t be popping up by me as surrounded by my extensive estate 😆

LoCo, I’m with you 🙂

I didn’t find it a very inspiring programme – which is what I usually look for from a Grand Designs.

They got given a huge barn, through lots of money at it, didn’t really “design” the interior much (surely the point of the programme) and ended up with a fairly strange part empty building.

£850K for a two bed barn conversion is poor VFM but that’s their decision. If that was round here they would certainly make a profit selling it.

we all upgrade constantly and are consistently drawn to the latest design led innovations all of which happen to enhance the experience of mountainbiking.

bullshit. you are a marketing mans dream

Fairly non conventional needs for their building studio, workshop and toy collection, so was different to the norm, just a shame they didn’t put a Limecrete floor or similar in.

jeepers what a bunch of conventional bores you lot are!
yeah they had too much cash and she was a bit annoying but it was very inventive and interesting and challenges the idea everyone in this country seems to have about how its ok to live in pastiche mock georgian/victorian/edwardian noddy toy town boxes!

I don’t think it challenged anything – they just built something to suit their needs. In itself that doesn’t make it a success and I thought there was much about it that was very ugly.

m_f, it surely did challenge your views on accommodation/living hence yours and others posts about it here! you have an opinion about it, it made you think therefore you may may not question you’re own living scenario, thats all i’m saying. ugly is subjective and not what i was talking about
LoCo yes limecrete would’ve been nice
tomthumb you’ll be one of the few then!

surely did challenge your views on accommodation/living

“Challenge” is one of those words often used to try and make something that someone doesn’t necessarily like/agree with/believe in seem as though it’s because they’re boring/conventional.

The people on last night did things to deliberately be ‘different’. They said so. They obviously feel that they have to consciously try to be different to actually be different. That I would argue is something that requires them to inherently be very conventional.

Designing things to suit yourself and enhance your ‘living experience’ is not the same thing.

ok not challenge make you question then! most of the posts were about how the couple chose to live, their decisions are kind of irrelevant to the point i was making as yours would be if you were doing the same, if you did something differently then you would have your own motivations but if the result of that was that it made people think about their own existence and change it in a positive way for them but not necessarily the same thats good no??

Designing things to suit yourself and enhance your ‘living experience’ is not the same thing.

really? if you had the budget to design and build your own house would you not design it to suit yourself and therefore enhance your living experience

It wasn’t in the least inventive or interesting, they’d simply fixed a barn and stuck their possessions in it, added a couple of “rooms” and that was it. Massively environmentally unfriendly to boot. Isn’t this what people did with warehouses in the 70’s?

i don’t usually watch the show anymore as I can’t stand that chap who presents it, but my main problem with yesterdays build is that it was so damn ugly!

“question” in that context is also one of those words 🙂

My point being that people tend to go for similar things because they’re popular or suit most people. Sure some people just choose things because they’re the accepted norm but that doesn’t mean that everyone else can’t question, just that the answer is ‘I don’t need to do it differently’.

I think you misunderstood “Designing things to suit yourself and enhance your ‘living experience’ is not the same thing.”

To use maths it’d be:

(Designing things to suit yourself and enhance your ‘living experience’) is not the same thing as being ‘different’

Hope that’s clearer

so we agree….. sort of!

I really liked it, especially the two silos, the clever roof and the mix of old and industrial. Heating bills would be a nightmare though.

I don’t think it can be called unimaginative as they have created a home that is a long way from the norm, has some inspired features and has loads of character.

I don’t agree that it was in any way imaginative. They simply made a big space for their workshops and added a couple of bedrooms at one end. They admitted themselves during the show to not have considered how to deal with the space once finished (although they did do some quite nice things – but that was by accident, not design from the outset)

I seriously think that for the thick end of £1million they could have (and probably should have) done something more imaginative, more challenging – especially considering they are both creative people.

At the start the barn and the wood frame made me go wow! 🙂

At the end, the result made me go Ugh!? :-/