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Maximises the build to value relationship. 4 beds worth a couple 100k more than a 2 bed for not THAT much more investment.
As for the proximity, it's no closer than any given new build. Put a fence up between and no-one will know the difference.
I think it was built with nephew and family in mind..
I too don't get being older, single, wanting to be more sustainable- and yet building a pretty chunky sized house that goes 50% over budget...
At least there wasn't a pregnant client this time. I was worried for a moment.
Ah, the ubiquitous one man band steel fabricator up the road , doing it cheaper than a larger company.
Wonder if he is BS-EN 1090 UKCA “approved” to supply fabricated steelwork. Bit daft to show off on national TV if he’s not.
(Not that anyone polices the bloody thing though)
Ah, the ubiquitous one man band steel fabricator up the road , doing it cheaper than a larger company.
Thought they said he was an experienced fabricator for the agricultural sector but hadn't done a house before, so I expect he's approved to apply steelwork for all sorts of purposes including frames to help people get off their high horses 😉
For once I thought the architect(ural designer?) had a valid point about the front door and the replacement did work better. Weird not to get a QS to confrim your budget is unachievable until half way through the build, though at least she didn't chop down the magic money tree.
I thought it was a shame the roof garden/terrace wasn't finished, I thought it looked pretty boring at the beginning when they showed the cgi until they added all the plants. Too many GD houses spend too much on the house and forget the garden.
The roof garden appeared to be a bit of an exaggeration of success to me, the “view” was shot from a drone / camera about 50ft above their heads.
I found this one a bit dull. Nice finished result internally but it was just a box with an ugly roof on it. Ridiculously over budget once again.
I think the plot size means a smaller house or a different shape to allow it to be further away from the house next door would've worked better.
Thought they said he was an experienced fabricator for the agricultural sector but hadn’t done a house before, so I expect he’s approved to apply steelwork for all sorts of purposes including frames to help people get off their high horses 😉
Even agricultural buildings are classed as Ex Class 1 (have been for a number of years).
Not doubting his ability to be able to weld plates to the ends of beams and columns. I expect he is quite good at it, but unless he has the accreditation i mentioned , then it is illegal to sell pre fabricated steelwork .
Looking on his website , there is no mention of it ( most companies will proudly display it), and there is no website that you can go to to find out if they are on the list.
Until the likes of building control ask for a copy of the certs , along with full set of structural calcs etc then companies will get away with supplying non certified steel to clueless builders and homeowners
I found this one a bit dull.
It was a Minecraft house
And if you sat down there wouldn't be a view on the roof
Too many GD houses spend too much on the house and forget the garden.
And they never have a bloody shed or garage for all those gardening tools and junk, never mind bikes!
Garden's can evolve- priority will be to get into the house, especially after the months/years of delay
Found this week's episode & house pretty dull really and the layout seemed odd to, nothing more than a bungalow with glass walls and flat roof terrace, fair play for the family build mind.
It was very dull, meat n potatoes architecture
I'm interested in the guttering on such a large flat roof. How was the water shedded? Show us the guttering Kev
And they never have a bloody shed or garage for all those gardening tools and junk, never mind bikes!
links with
Garden’s can evolve- priority will be to get into the house, especially after the months/years of delay
I agree that gardens can be sorted later, but storage can't really evolve because people will move in with all of their junk. Both my wife and I noticed that despite the footprint of the most recent house, there was almost nowhere to keep stuff. Even the bedrooms seemed to have minimal room for clothes. Those three spare bedrooms will soon be full of the stuff that's normally kept up the loft, which she didn't have.
I can't be unusual in needing space for lots of books, guitars, bikes, surfboards, paddleboards, a ton of camping gear, Xmas trees, ad infinitum. This is crammed into any available space, even in our reasonable sized house. Even spare bedding and towels take up a whole wardrobe in my household of 5. And I'd guarantee that if I could spend half a million on a house, then I'd have a lot of other bits and bobs to store, and it wouldn't be stored in a damp shed if I was living in a Grand Design. It is striking how few of these builds are actually designed around the buyers' lifestyles.
I’d watch a tv show about rich people storage solutions for towels, scart cables, spare jars, hybrid commuters with “sentimental value” and finding out how they store their kids 1000s of stuffed toys.
Doesn't look too safe for kids does it? Priorities are a bit off too.. Anyone for tennis?
Best house yet and nice people.
Yes, final result was brilliant.
That was stunning.
Thought it was going to be a bitten off more than they could chew for a bit.
Considering what it looked like in May, there was a heck of a lot of work put in the last couple of months
And they never have a bloody shed or garage for all those gardening tools and junk, never mind
Just been through that ourselves, moving from a 4 bed house + large attic +garage to 2 bed + garage. New house has portal frame design with pitched ceilings - no attic either. Builder thought we were mad with cupboards everywhere and double garage. 2 houses of same external design next door - fewer kitchen units and only small wardrobes in each bedroom, no cupboards or even bookcases in lounge, garage or even shed - stuff everywhere!
The pond and the wildlife were superb. Not entirely sure it was ideal for a young family, but I’m not a parent, so based on views of others. The tennis court could have waited until later in the build
It was beautiful and little kids are soon grown up kids - don’t design a house like that around the age kids were / are. I can’t comprehend how they did all that for the budget though 🤯
Really liked that one and only £8k over budget. Looked like a lot of hard graft.
Loved the idea of the pool and how it encouraged diversity. Looked amazing. One of the few GD houses I would love to live in.
Another 'look how much money I've got'.
Why not redo the old house? Spend £200k on that, dig a pond, put the tennis court in and save £300k.
Added to that, what a waste of a house and the cost in carbon emissions of the new one.
But it did look very nice.
Well it was certainly Grand.
Jealousy, money, waste of original house and everything aside I thought it looked pretty amazing from the outside with the ponds and landscaping (ignoring the tennis court). Inside was nothing that different too many big designs other than the access to the pool.
I was amazed they did it only 8k over the 650k budget when you think that one storey box without the ponds/pools and landscaping cost 450k last week.
The house I own is a mid terrace worth 70k tops. It's another universe!🤣
Anyone know which area that last one was?
They mentioned Chichester in the programme, but I may not have been paying complete attention.
I was criticising throughout as usual but fair play it did look lovely at the end. I bet Mrs doesn't resent the fact she had to make lamp shades out of sushi mats as Mr had spanked a load on 'truck stop' sized tennis court 😄
And why is it almost always the bloody windows that cause delays?
I wonder how much it would've cost to bring the old house up to anything like that standard - bare minimum seemed to be insulation, windows, rewire, boiler (and full heating system) and that's before you uncover any structural issues, all to live in a 1930s layout. The fact that nobody had bought the plot before them was potentially as much down to the issues with the house as with the old drainage pond (which had clearly had some work done before the film crew turned up).
And I had good money on sprog #3 arriving!
Anyone know which area that last one was?
They mentioned South Downs, just had a nosy on Google maps and Thorney island is a good fit. The Wide shot of all the boats is definitely the Thorney Channel
Anywhere in the Chichester Harbour area. Chidham, Bosham, Southbourne etc
Would you be paying someone to do laundry if you were that rich?
(Genuine question – I’m not sure at what level of wealth you start having ‘staff’. I did also wonder whether there was a nanny’s quarters somewhere we didn’t see. I’d probably have gone with one with three kids!)
YEs - in which case having double machines makes even MORE sense as the cleaner/housekeeper can rattle thru e.g. all the bedding in half the time (and the person time is expensive compared to the machine cost)
Would you be paying someone to do laundry if you were that rich?
I am not sure they could be classed as rich - very comfortably well off yes, but a £650k budget (which meant they had to sell the one asset they had) doesn't necessarily mean they have the disposable income to spend on such things.
I am not sure they could be classed as rich – very comfortably well off yes, but a £650k budget
£650k on top of the original £800k to buy the original house. Pretty sure having a £1.45M house counts as rich.
Very nice from the back but from the brief view a fairly average McMansion from the front. Not that anyone's going to have to look at it from across the road:
@50.8210965,-0.8488429,276m/data=!3m1!1e3"> https://www.google.com/maps/ @50.8210965,-0.8488429,276m/data=!3m1!1e3
I think there must be some special TV programme way of accounting when these people say what they've spent, a bit like on Homes under the Hammer when they do up a wreck with new kitchen and bathrooms and rewiring for "£2K". Probably excludes parts and labour...
Looked lovely, the pond was cool, but…
1) why are these houses always so large? I appreciate the clue might be in the program title but surely it will be a nightmare to hear etc.
2) the second pond that the storm drainage goes into.. i hope that’s just the surface water drainage, but either way I can imagine at some point that drainage will get in their fancy pond!
The best GD in a very long time.
I really liked the house, the pool and the connection with nature.
I could easily live without the tennis court though, maybe I'd put an underground bike cave/gym/man cave in its place.
A likeable couple too.
I concur - best build for a while, both in terms of the final product, but also how they got there.
They didn't just spaff a load of money at it, really put in some hard graft and made sacrifices to make it happen.
A couple of things that struck me:
What a good job of designing/costing it they had done. To deliver a project like that (over such a long period) and only go 8k over is incredible. The money constraints that they had weren't related to over-running costs - it was about the availability of capital.
The pool was amazing - really amazing. The decision to hire a consultant for it was a really good one.....if it had gone wrong it would have been a total frikkin nightmare.
Didn't really understand the tennis court decision - but I guess it was made when they thought they had 100% of the money to finish (see above) - and so it wasn't a competing priority. Foolish perhaps not to hold that money in reserve.
Called the window issue as soon as I saw one of the fitters with his face blurred-out.... a sure sign the relationship was going to turn sour!
Seemed like genuinely nice people - found myself rooting for them to succeed
Puppy was super cute
Why was Kevin wearing his socks in the pool?
Kitchen looked sh*t
The pool was awesome, tennis court was stupid.
I thought the house was too big as well but it looked nice
They probably played a lot of tennis.
If one of us did it and had the land and the funds we would no doubt have a Pump Track that would attract negative comments on the Tennisbatworld.com chat forum.
I really like that one - and I thought the kitchen area was brilliant...as well as echo the comments about the pond and garden. I would love to see it in 5 years time again,
I still find it amazing how much money some folk have - mid 30's and spending £1.5m of what seemed to be cash on a build.
I still don't get the hugeness of the main house area, it seemed an echoey and less welcoming hallway / main lounge - I bet 99% of their time is spent in the kitchen, snug and bedrooms...'welcome to my mansion' statement?
TV has a way of not showing how snug the neighbours are to this build.
Puppy was super cute
Their dog looks very similar to ours - when it came running into shot I weirdly thought she had run into the TV set for a moment 🙂
I would love to see it in 5 years time again.
I know an early adopter of a natural swimming pond. A few years in now and it looks great with well established plants, lots of wildlife etc. But he has had to increase mechanical filtration as the original reeds/plant based filtration wasn't quite enough to maintain the water quality. I think he may also be thinking about adding some PV powered background heating to bring it up a few degrees.
I still don’t get the hugeness of the main house area, it seemed an echoey and less welcoming hallway / main lounge – I bet 99% of their time is spent in the kitchen, snug and bedrooms…’welcome to my mansion’ statement?
The problem with big echoey open plan houses is surely that they are big echoey open plan houses, and nothing can really change that. They don't work for a family, unless the kids spend all their time in their rooms (imo, of course!).
"Kids, would you mind not playing Roblox, while listening to that awful Youtube Vlog at max volume? I'd like to put on some Shostakovich while I parboil the oven chips. Oh, sorry, Mum's just decided she needs to practice the harp now, pass my headphone!"