Grand Designs – full commitment again…

What a load of bollox, massive houses are not eco & environmentally friendly, and relax.

With you there @Dickyboy

That house is the same square meterage as the nine houses in the terrace in which I live

Interesting roofing/ solar PV product used I suppose

Another un-finished mega-barn

Kev really should know better than to call an oversized steel glass and concrete visitors centre any kind of eco just because of a few solar panels. There is also no way it is only going to cost £1500 per m2. Usual grand design bs.

At least they’ve got used to the idea of not seeing each other for extended periods, which will be easy to do there. Plus, if they get divorced, she’s got the credentials to make sure he gets the house.

And all that angst for some piece of paper from the Passivhaus people.

Be nice if any actually got finished in this series, clever roof and I’d like to see it finished but echo what others have said, too big. Next weeks revisit should be good, I loved that conversion first time round.

Agreed, not sure how somewhere that unnecessarily big can be called an eco house. 

Given that the UK average house is something like 120 sqm, 2 people occupying a space that would typically accommodate 12-15 people is hardly environmentally or ecologically sustainable. How much CO2 was produced pumping all that concrete? Some of the exterior finishing looked shonky too – it’ll look rubbish in a few years time.

What a decision to make; should we have two kitchen islands or just slum it with one?!

Should a house for two people be about the size of Orkney Airport!

I don’t know how you guys manage it week in week out. It’s pure drivel.

I dipped in to see the wood worker ladies house. Natural sustainable resources… Shipped in from Germany. Cool story. Claims of no more money and an extra 100k is produced. Talk of woodland and space…. Cuts her meagre 1acre plot in half when she sells her existing house. Loving the views from the upstairs floor… So you have made it stand out and visible in the landscape. Not even startedi inside. “Made a shonky as fuc railway” just use a tractor or atleast use a Landover with off-road tyres and point it the right way. Home made formwork… Just use the cardboard ones that actually work. The most interesting bit was the example house he visited. That was beautiful!

Absolute walloppers every single time, I am genuinely struggling to think of genuinely impressive builds, the bodger’s house was. There was one built around a tree, octagonal in shape, that was interesting. Most are clearly just jeopardy bate.

They should do a series on genuinely thought provoking builds. Small, mega sustainable social housing, flood resilienting communities.

Once you have bought an expensive plot of land are there external forces pushing you to build the biggest house possible on it so you can ‘realise the potential of your investment’ or somesuch?

We always watch Grand Designs thinking “What a beautiful space, but we would build a house in the corner and enjoy the land”. I assume we must be very financially niaive.

I’m getting a bit pissed off at not seeing finished houses in this series, and this one is soooooo ridiculously massive even for the largest of large families.

I’m struggling to see how he still reckons £1.25m when it’s finished. Some of the other stupid builds in this series that are small by comparison are more.

The solar roofing is good, but as for the rest of the econ credentials, surely the scale and materials for two people makes it crap.

Grrr….. Not sure why I watch it anymore 🤣

Not sure why I watch it anymore

I’ve actually stopped watching them really.

Edit: I should add why. I know they choose extreme people and the ‘Grand’ project. I’ve been on site with GD in the past, they do choose nutters. And they are happy to be ‘economic’ with the truth when filming.

But they just seem to choose more and more oddballs, projects with more bling than great design, finances from another planet etc. And so few are finishing at all…

Only caught the last few minutes, just in time to see the cat flap that cost £1600 🤯

It didn’t even look like a cat that would be going outside either 🤣 Being a cat I’m sure it would refuse to use it and just roam the acres of empty house shitting and throwing up where it likes 🤣

We also see half of these projects and think how happy we’d be in the house they’re knocking down in a nice patch of land that we could enjoy and grow stuff in.

What Matt said.  Series from a few years ago had some great stuff.  The “woodsman” who built a modest wooden house using archaic methods.  The young couple who made an old pumping station into a really nice quirky house.  folk working with budgets that normal folk might have

The “woodsman” who built a modest wooden house using archaic methods.

This is the one that I will remember after all the weird concrete boxes with floor to ceiling windows and 40 grand kitchens have faded.

The cat I saw was Siamese, so you’ll unlikely be letting that out.  This series has been about unfinished, and un-liveable houses.  Last year’s cliff house, that went so far over budget – I wonder if it ever sold. Wife divorced him.

The money involved is bonkers, where is it all coming from, especially at these people’s stages of life, you’d not want to be borrowing that amount in your late fifties/sixties.

The money involved is bonkers, where is it all coming from,

Being Bernie Ecclestone’s missus’ divorce lawyer pays for at least one house.

Last year’s cliff house, that went so far over budget – I wonder if it ever sold. Wife divorced him.

If you’re talking about the lighthouse at saunton its currently on Rightmove recently reduced to £6.5million – still with no internal fittings (ie lights or a kitchen) and in a position that on a sunny day you’ll spend over two hours in a traffic jam trying to get home…

and at £6.5million that barely covers the money he borrowed which means he destroyed his life, and a perfectly good house, for nothing…

Im clearly doing something wrong as I cant even afford a normal mortgage (despite having an above average salary) and am doomed to rent for the rest of my life, how the hell are these people just coming up with a couple of hundred thousand from nowhere every week???

But they just seem to choose more and more oddballs, projects with more bling than great design, finances from another planet etc. And so few are finishing at all…

I think grand designs has been around since 1999. Since then they’ve shown all sorts of houses and builds and educated the audience. I think that’s fed our appitite so we want more and more elaborate builds and characters and secretly we enjoy it when it goes wrong as we will never have £100000 to spend on a kitchen island.

What I don’t understand, is when they build these massive houses is why they don’t do it in sections. Build half of it first and finish it and move in and then build the 2nd phase with less pressure and stress.

Might not be feesible or economical but they just always seem to bite off more than they can chew.

Going back a few episodes to Rosa and parachute/sweetie man…

OnlyFans was suggested as an explaination of how they were/are able to service a mortgage of that size on what we assume their income to be

This is exactly what the OH and I suggested!! Classic OF material there, I becha! My OH found her instagram account, and it’s very “tiny swimsuit and gymwear” heavy!

DrP

Being Bernie Ecclestone’s missus’ divorce lawyer pays for at least one house.

Princess Di’s I think they said too.

I thought the house was stupid for all the reasons listed above, but the couple did seem *relatively* down to earth for people who have clearly been earnings £100s of thousands for decades.

tjagain
Full Member
What Matt said. Series from a few years ago had some great stuff. The “woodsman” who built a modest wooden house using archaic methods.

Was that the guy living in the woods making charcoal?

I don’t really watch the series but I caught that one, the house was just beautiful and the guy… Well, the world would be a better place if there were more like him. Genuinely decent bloke.

Yes poopscoop

tjagain
Full Member
Yes poopscoop

Did they ever do some sort of follow-up to him, his new family and the build?

Id love to watch that.

yes again they did.  first one was just him and a girlfriend.  Second one they had kids and extended the house

tjagain
Full Member
yes again they did. first one was just him and a girlfriend. Second one they had kids and extended the house

Ah! I must have seen that one then because I know he met someone from the local village or something and they had a baby.

I look forward to watching this one later. I’d rather they completed them nicely but there’s always a bit of fun in the car crashes.

All the current lot are Covid effected builds just because of the timing. I’d imagine that most GD projects are 3 years from getting the green light and even then not all will proceed or get finished. I’d put money on them filming 8 for 6 programmes each series and this cohort has been worse than normal. A 50-100% increase in material costs will significantly effect anyone’s plans.

All the current lot are Covid effected builds just because of the timing.

I was going to point this out as well. 

There may also be something in the fact that the rest of the world is catching up with GD style builds. Everywhere I go at the moment I’ll see concrete and glass boxes which wouldn’t look out of place on the programme. Most of us can’t afford them but they are sneakily infiltrating our neighbourhoods. 😀 

I don’t think it was mentioned last night how much the plot was. I’m guessing that given the size, location and already having planning it wouldn’t be far off another million.

Discovering Kirsten Dirksen on youtube has negatively effected my desire to watch grand designs. Far more interesting people/ designs/ communities etc.

Yeh, there’s some great stories on there.

Frickin polystyrene! Hateful shite and they used acres of it, bonded permanently to tons of concrete.

Im sure the planning authority would’ve signed off a reduction in size easily enough. To say that they didn’t want another ‘fight with the planners’ was pathetic.

In terms of ‘classic’ GD, remember the guy who made his house of mud and the young guy who specialised in making bent metal artwork so applied that to the house, scaled up  seemed to work

And the modest 2bed build (I think) on Skye

A couple of times they’ve gone to architects houses and they’ve been stunning and then back to the/a client which looks like a monstrous exaggeration of the idea of the architects house.

Wasn’t the guy with the shipping containers on the family farm in NI an architect. That was lovely, apart from the carbon fiber (?) bath.

On the budgets issue, sometimes you get the distinct feeling that the folk are being cadgey about their build cost as they are worried that the tax man might be watching the programme.  Which might then lead to a few awkward questions over where the finance came from….

Anyone else think he was a little too personal with his assistant.

Back to the shedhouse, nowt special. Would go well as a bmw showroom

The usual half finished monstrosity. There was one a few years ago that was repeated on more 4 yesterday. Young chap and his partner bought a 9 x 4m plot in East London, dug down (had issues with the first basement building firm) and ended up with a very nice 2 bed , 2 bath quirky house and a proper community feel as they worked with their very close neighbours. Went way over their anticipated budget of £160k, at £250k but a superb end result and he embodied all that is good about self builders.

https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/interiors/grand-designs-couples-dream-of-escaping-rent-trap-by-building-londons-smallest-twobedroom-house-turns-into-a-nightmare-a114956.html