Last night's Grand Designs…

Are we on about mad tattooed woman from last week? I thought more ageing trustafarian than landed gentry. Whatever she was, its not a bad position to be in, to be able to shake the lower boughs of the money tree and rustle up another £400k

The end result was absolutely hideous. It looked like an empty builders yard.

Missed last nights. I’ll have to watch on catch up tonight.

FWIW, If I sold my house now and paid off my mortgage, I’d have around £310k – I’m 47, bought first house at 28 and had an inheritance of £80k just over two years ago.

I’m hardly landed gentry and I bet loads of people on here are in similar positions to me….

Binners – no we aren’t talking about the Steptoe & Son yard, it’s last night’s episode we are ‘discussing’.

No binners, we’re not. You need to write literally get working programme

Oh… ok… sorry… I’ll try and keep up.

johndoh – Our kids modest 3 bed house in central London, bought 20 years ago, is now worth the same as all the property in Rochdale combined 😯

Perhaps not ‘landed Gentry’ but certainly from a “privileged” background…

While I found the whole Eco-build thing interesting, quite liked the final house and did end up interested the system of point scoring for Code 6 acceptance, Yet again it was a build that demonstrates more than anything it’s financing that makes these things happen… Don’t bother even dreaming if you ain’t got the money.

The most interesting Grand designs for me are still the ones where the budget is tighter and they still pull it off, best one is still the fella who built his house (for ~£25k?)in a coppice in the first series, that one was pretty “Eco” too if IIRC…

Our kids modest 3 bed house in central London, bought 20 years ago, is now worth the same as all the property in Rochdale combined

Probably be subject to the proposed mansion tax too I suspect.

Nice rant earlier by the way.

Code is currently been wound up by the Tories. Parts of it are been rolled into the Building Regulations but a fair amount will no longer be required.

Will this makes new houses cheaper – No.
Will this make new houses better – No.
Will this make major House Builders (who donate to the Tories) more money – Yes.

Perhaps not ‘landed Gentry’ but certainly from a “privileged” background…

Again I don’t really agree – she looked to be in her 40s so to be able to realise whatever assets she had and raise £338,000 isn’t unreasonable, especially if she has been in receipt of some kind of windfall as I mentioned above.

As I said, I could raise around £310k and I am in no way from a privileged background – indeed I took loans out to help my parents from having their house repossessed when I was in my mid-twenties, didn’t have a holiday abroad until I was 16, wasn’t allowed to go on school skiing trips because my parents couldn’t afford it. I just struck lucky in being reasonably good at my job and getting a fair wage that allowed me to buy a property (with zero financial help from my parents, but they did spend ages helping me sort the house out) before the silly housing boom – when was that? About 1997?

johndoh – Member
FWIW, If I sold my house now and paid off my mortgage, I’d have around £310k – I’m 47, bought first house at 28 and had an inheritance of £80k just over two years ago.

I’m hardly landed gentry and I bet loads of people on here are in similar positions to me….

Hmmmm, 47 and able to cash in for upwards of £300k eh?
I’d group you in the tail end of the “Pulling up the ladder” generation TBH…

35 here, bought our first house 5 years ago for under £190k we got a good mortgage deal but we still spanked all our savings and had input from my parents for the deposit. It’s gained a little equity but honestly I don’t really see how we’ll ever be in the sort of position to pull 300 grand out of our arses…

Most of my peers still haven’t bought, and as for my children’s generation goes, I think they can pretty much forget owning a house…

I think the generational wealth gap cut off point is probably being born after about 1975-ish…

I’d group you in the tail end of the “Pulling up the ladder” generation TBH…

Perhaps, but she seemed to be a similar age to me and I was making the point that she wasn’t necessarily ‘privileged’ or ‘landed gentry’ just because she could raise that money.

My business partner is 10 years my junior so I can appreciate your position – he did all he could to get on the property ladder about 9 years ago but his property is barely worth any more than it was when he first bought it.

No school skiing trips? You poor mite! Wheres the humanity? I ask you?! 😉

😀
It was painful at the time, all my mates going, me stuck at home.

Perhaps they could plant more wildflowers to offset the impact of such a large house being occupied by only two people.

I thought it was fairly dull, another box, clad in wood. You also have to wonder how long some of it, such as that flat roof will last.

I’m confused by the shower block and lockers thing for a small build. What next? A smoothie van supplying free nettle and mushroom (locally picked of course) smoothies, a massage cabin and a psychiatrist on site?

House looked good. Reasonable budget.

@Leku, to be honest one of the main takeaways I got from the programme was that this code is nonsense. Far too easily manipulated (like the planting flowers) and also the no-waste thing – how easy to fudge that is it.

Perhaps they could plant more wildflowers to offset the impact of such a large house being occupied by only two people.

TBF it was hardly ostentatious was it? Two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a music room, a family room and a kitchen.

But has been touched on – it is absurd that they had to build a bike store to get Code 6 – irespective of whether or not they had bikes or intended to ride them – they had to waste resource just to tick a box.

I’ve been working on a Code 6 house in south wales. The bike store is getting installed even though the owner is paraplegic!

At least it’ll be a handy place for him to store his spare wheelchair(s).

In all honesty it’s good to set such a high standard. As ever the programme was edited to focus a bit too much on the few points for flowers, and not on all the points for energy performance and impact on the local environment, which are actually the bulk of the points.

The fact that they had missed some points for the site set-up at the start was unforgivable, the inspection regime is very rigid. Hard as they are to achieve, you have to over-budget on the points, assuming that you’ll miss some along the way.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the outcome, but it was tidy enough. Clever in the use of space and tall floor to ceiling heights made it look bigger than it was. I do have some reservations about the thermal effectiveness of that big concrete wall, but would be interested to see some energy figures once it’s been occupied for a while.

I don’t see how planting more flowers is ‘manipulating’ it when they give points for it…

Tonight’s episode is brought to you by the words ‘ker’ and ‘ching’ 8)

Tonight’s episode is also littered with fish and water puns 🙄

So what happens when all the silt is deposited in their basement thing? Will the house be stuck high?

Smelly?