Grand designs

Completely agree with packer. I get the money no object thing but the guy built up a successful business from scratch so I have respect for what he’s achieved.

The world needs more perfectionists.

One of the many wonders of STW is making a quick lunchbreak read a viable alternative to having to watch the programme in the first place.

Which is handy.

same expensive windows imported from Germany,

I don’t see why this is used negatively. The Germans are so much further ahead than the UK in regard to building products, along with many other things, that it’s a no brainer sourcing from there.
Perhaps we should settle for second or third best UK products?
We all know how crap British homes are, don’t we?

To be fair to the show, about 30% of the episodes a series are not mega-bucks money (<£500K)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Designs_episodes#Series_14_.282014.29

It’s just the ridonkulous ones that make the headlines (like that water tower in Kennington a few years ago).

OMITN,

Yes you could probably do a quick sketch of the house and the client from the above info and you’d struggle to get it far wrong.

Here’s the key words:

Barcelona pavilion
Massive
OCD
Glasses
Bic (razor)
Woodland
Massive

Thread title should be marked ‘spoiler’ really.

Completely agree with packer. I get the money no object thing but the guy built up a successful business from scratch so I have respect for what he’s achieved.

I don’t have a problem with that. Good luck to him. My issue is that to most people the original budgets on the builds they feature are already stratospherically crazy, but then they go quarter, or half a million over-budget and sit talking about if it was a minor problem with the plumbing, after coming up with the extra dosh as if by magic.

The interesting thing about the original programmes was that they featured relatively normal people who had an actual budget to work too, which meant coming up with compromises or ingenious solutions, which made for interesting telly. Just saying “oh… I’ll chuck another half a million at it then”, doesn’t really count as creative problem solving. Its just the Gordon Brown approach to housebuilding.

And watching it time after time after time on houses that really aren’t that architecturally interesting got tedious a long time ago. I’ve had a look at the house and the clips on the website, and it just looks like countless other houses they’ve featured over the years.

The interesting stuff with people building houses out of shipping containers, or sustainable materials, or anything that has a real-world budget seems to have been completely jettisoned, in favour of lazily documenting another millionaires vanity project

Binners +1

Anyone can throw mega money at a concrete box and make it look smart and modern. Even the Romans used concrete more creatively than a lot of grand designs.

What do you mean “Even the Romans”, you heathen?!

Do you know what they did for us…

Oh yeah, almost forgot – gotta highlight these two classically OT comments…

What a c0ck master, bet he bic’s his head twice a day the chrome dome !

I got the impression his kids don’t live with him. I can’t imagine why he’s single.

🙂

FFS, you should have a word…

Here’s an idea – don’t watch it then.
That’s a freebie that one, don’t thank me.

Here’s an idea – don’t watch it then.

I don’t. Gave up on it years ago. Just thought I’d detail why

You can have that for free too 😛

I still enjoy it but it’s as much about what will the challenge be faced this week?
– idiotic design
– not enough money
– ill advised budgeting
– obnoxious people
– pregnancy(s)
– sh*t builder
– more money than sense

It’s the ones that are properly appropriate to the individual’s needs that stand-out for me. It doesn’t need to appeal to me in a design sense. It just needs to accurately meet the needs of the individual.

The woodsman’s place is particularly memorable for being appropriate to the individual’s needs and was matched by his skill-set.

Friends of mine built a house on GD in the second series (I think) its since been sold (bitter divorce) and what the new people have done with it it beyond belief.

They said Kev was ok but this was a while ago, the builder a mutual friend has done very very well out of it. Is in high demand.

The woodsman’s place is particularly memorable for being appropriate to the individual’s needs and his skillset.

I love that house and the way he extended it to cope with the wife and two kids

I also really like the straw bale house the family in france built

Yak – yes, good point!

Still, better ersatz modern than ersatz Victoriana IMO.

I think my favourite was the couple converting an old water works in Chesterfield. It was a shell and they properly restored it, turned it into a brilliant living space, and made a beautiful job of it. All on a real-world budget, while putting the majority of the donkey work in themselves.

The very polar opposite of what the more recent ones seem to have become.

Better that it’s not ersatz at all!

Not watched GD for a while, but my favourites from past series were the climbing couple who restored a house in Edinburgh, and the woodsman who did an eco build in the woods (also worth seeing the few years later show for that one after he got married and had a kid).

It was a temple to his ego and I bet it smelled of bleach.

Whatever, it was his money to play with and the attention to detail was phenomenal.

bikebouy – Member
So you chose to watch this instead of the origins of the universe on BBC2?

Nobs
As someone else pointed out, technology has gifted us with the ability to record two things at once, while watching a previously recorded programme, along with being able to download programmes for later viewing.
Really quite amazing, you should check it out.

As someone else pointed out

So you added your comment for what reason exactly.

Extra points for using the same sarcastic tone (even going so far as to use the same “amazing”), though I think Gary M’s post was much more succinct and timely.

His attention to detail was not that great. If you look at the nighttime pic in the link below, the first 4 wall tiles are a fnucking mile out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3226633/Grand-Designs-biggest-house-New-series-features-vast-project-lounge-big-four-fire-engines-five-metre-COUCH.html

Nice design but the house needs more daylight coz it looks dark, especially along the long corridor, with negative(yin) energy. He needs to let in more sun light.

Why did it have the supporting pillars that needed to be expensively clad in polished stainless steel? With all that “attention to detail”, surely they could have designed the steel framework so the pillars weren’t required?

I liked the style of the metalwork man – I’ll give you perfect, seamless mirror polished finishing, but you’ll pay a hefty premium for it.

Didn’t see any point in starting a separate thread for this…

Did anyone see Amazing Spaces last night?

The sculpture chap in Norfolk who claimed he made it up as he went along. How come the end pieces for his ‘adhoc’ shed were perfectly formed, symmetrical and looked like they were done in a workshop.

I think he’d got it all drawn up on a CAD programme!

How come the end pieces for his ‘adhoc’ shed were perfectly formed, symmetrical and looked like they were done in a workshop.

Oh I don’t know. Maybe its because he’d spent his entire life expertly forming wood. The clue’s in the job title

And anyway… so what if he did?

It was still infinitely more interesting than watching some millionaire egomaniac take delivery of his quarter of a million quids worth of windows from Germany. Again.

The stuff that was on last night at least seemed to have some kind of emotional investment involved from some likeable, normal people, on real world budgets. It’s the very polar opposite of Grand Designs

@tmm – not how I viewed it. my first thought was “what would Building Control” have to say about that, pretty wonky looking structure..?” I Like Amazing spaces, I just can’t stand George Clarke.. and his longhaired behatted brown-nosing “designer” friend.

“what would Building Control” have to say about that, pretty wonky looking structure..?”

“It’s a caravan, not our problem.”

The sculpture chap in Norfolk who claimed he made it up as he went along. How come the end pieces for his ‘adhoc’ shed were perfectly formed, symmetrical and looked like they were done in a workshop.

I think he’d got it all drawn up on a CAD programme!

You’d be amazed what you can do without CAD.

binners – Member
Here’s an idea – don’t watch it then.
I don’t. Gave up on it years ago. Just thought I’d detail why

You can have that for free too

So you haven’t watched it but know how crap it is? 🙄

Just to highlight what you’ve missed from last year:

1 – Clifftop House
2 – Cross laminated house, budget £80k
3 – Round House, original budget £200k
4 – Shipping container house, budget £100k
5 – Urban shed
6 – Periscopes house, budget £330k
7 – Floating house

As you can see, not many of them, if any, had massive budgets, and I don’t remember many being glass and concrete boxes. Most were very interesting, the floating house was fascinating.. There were also some good revisited houses – I liked the Japanese one in the Wye valley.

😆

Well this week sounds interesting. They’ve just trailed it on 4, with the line….

“This week …. the most expensive Grand Designs yet!”

Well whoop-de-****ing-doo! what other benchmark would you use to give anything validity, other than the size of the egomaniacs bank account? And how much of it he’s going to spank on his ridiculous vanity project 🙄

Looks like Kevin will be wonderful again then…

I’m with binners on this, I can’t work out why they go Germany for their windows either.

“Bram Vis and his wife Lisa want to build a beautiful cutting edge family house by the sea”

‘Bram Vis’ 😯

I already don’t like them!