Only just starting watching this week’s. Looks like a terrible idea and massive money pit even by grand designs standards

Plus the sky diving intro was cheesy AF. Reminded me of Alan partridge dry slope skiing

I’m saying nothing, as I’ve just got to the end.

Very nice on the outside. Short people only on the inside

Did she actually do anything physical towards the build ?

He didn’t seem the most practical. Levering a 12″ thick x 4′ diameter mill stone with a pickaxe with a mini excavator behind him.
That dining table seemed slightly less than practical too.

Did she actually do anything physical towards the build ?

Thought I saw her doing some plastering?

Anyway, balls to that, I’m watching John Cauldwell spaff £65mil doing up his Mayfair pad. Proper grand designs, complete with 8 car stacker.

They seem a bit daft. And annoying. Who’d have thought you might need some help with those millstones eh? Jesus Christ.

Edit: I’m being too generous. They’re thick as ****. Nice that Kevin has some barely concealed disdain for the too

Naïve? Yes. But fairplay to them for getting stuck in, loved the exterior (barring the front door) Interior lacked character but no point in saving rotten wood just to keep the purists happy. I’d want the split beam underneath sorting though TBH

I liked it looked nicer and cosey inside and they’d grafted probably despite what a set piece to camera showed whilst living in a tiny caravan with two dogs.

Yeah Kev – I agree it would have been nice to save some of the old timbers but they didn’t have the money and there wasn’t exactly a cue of people wanting to throw loads of money at it before this couple came along.

Anyway, balls to that, I’m watching John Cauldwell spaff £65mil doing up his Mayfair pad. Proper grand designs, complete with 8 car stacker.

What a ****. Even his skint ex car sales mate thought he was still a **** and was glad to have a scruffy salesyard of scrap metal and his dignity than Caudwells gaudy slag palace of chintz filled with some big titted flange tastic skirted ‘interior designers’ idea of style.

That Mayfair gaff. Where was the kitchen? You saw a glimpse of an industrial kitchen they must use for ballroom functions nthat – but what about when you just want a pint of vimto and a round of toast..!?

what about when you just want a pint of vimto and a round of toast..!?

‘Chef, rustle us up a pint of Vimto and a round of toast, would you?’

TBH, of all the billionaire mega spenders that you see on these kinds of shows, he seems the least of a ****. Ultra high standards, but honest and even reasonable about them. Even part of his reasoning for doing the place up wasn’t wholly self absorbed. Could see me being able to go for a drink with him. His round, and not at his mirrored dance floor private nightclub, obvs.

The millstone tables were much thinner – had they had one stone sliced into two halves? That would have been interesting to see.

So with all the previous passive eco house talk, how much energy does the mill consume for 2 people?

that table was a nice idea but looked awful to use. expect they will rest a big piece of glass on top eventually? but you would stick knock your knees on the stone…

I suspect it will be freezing cold and damp. Didn’t see any insulation on the walls. There may have been some under the new slab but it wasn’t filmed. Being over a stream is going to make it pretty damp. Perhaps you could get the mill race running to generate power but that has got to be a very expensive option

Amazed they did that for a whisker under £300k though.

The millstone tables were much thinner – had they had one stone sliced into two halves? That would have been interesting to see.

Iirc they said a planning condition was to keep at least two of the millstones in the property so I presume there were a few to choose from. Nice house but seemed to be for shortarses only. I thought they did ok with it though and I didn’t really get on with KMcC sneering about conservation on the lower floor timbers, as mentioned above nobody seemed in any rush to save the building before them.

Wife and I also thought Kevin was really over doing the lack of conservation inside. I’m sure they said it was listed, presumably only the outside. That’s a guide for me, the inside is ‘chatacter’ but not historically important, and given the cost… Okay maybe they could have saved or reused a few but better to save the building now then risk it collapsing in another 20 years waiting for some fools with more money.

Overall, nice outside, inside should work for them, hope it does.

I thought Kevin was being harsh too. A lot of that timber was dead and past the point of being conserved. It would have been nice to keep some but I feel the building wouldn’t have been long for this world anyway.

Plenty of other Grand Designs have done a much better job of saving rotten timber so saying its expensive or hard is a bit of a cop out. I see why they did it but I agreed with Kevin pretty much all the way. I think they might have even regretted it a bit once they had the finished loft room.

I’m sure they said it was listed, presumably only the outside.

No such thing as a partly listed building. Once it is listed the whole thing is covered

He looked broken at the end. Poor bloke.

I hope they’re happy there

I too thought the conservation bit on the wood was overdone.
Ultimately they have saved a structure which would probably have been cheaper to let it fall down and rebuild.
I thought it looked amazing from the outside and great from the first floor up, ground floor seemed a bit hobbity

Loved how it looked outside once done. As mentioned them taking it on and rescuing it is better than another 10 years of falling down.

Inside was a bit meh and I suspect once the timbers were condemned they just didn’t have the budget to do a higher end / more sympathetic finish. Th mill stones should have been reset into the lowered floor inside/outside or both as those tables looked daft-lethal.

I got the impression that after KmC went to town about the internal timbers they were really really upset with him. I know it was Covid times but there was then no more site visits between that early build stage and it being finished. I wondered if they kicked the programme makers out and only agreed a final look around if KMc said nicer things…..

saying its expensive or hard is a bit of a cop out

That really isn’t fair. Their budget was very meagre for the job in hand… I was expecting it to go from £250K to £400K during the project…. they kept it to £300K by making some hard decisions… losing the top floor rooms and replacing lots of badly damaged historic wood with new soft wood. That was the kind of cold hearted decision that meant they got the job done without magically pulling a £100K+ out from down the sofa, like so many other GD builders seem to manage to do.

That really isn’t fair. Their budget was very meagre for the job in hand

That’s still saying that didn’t save it because it was expensive or hard. They had a pretty relaxed attitude to conservation right from the start when talking about the original features. It certainly didn’t seem like they took much persuading to bin the lot. All that history has now gone into the stove over this last winter. I’m sure it was naivety rather than callousness and they did a decent job of some bits and the building is now saved so fair play to them. I just think on this issue an opportunity was missed and its now gone for good.

Does anyone know where you can buy that wood burner? Would fit our house really well

I wonder if this is where they bought it there’s a picture on the front page but I can’t find it in the site

https://wendronstoves.co.uk/

Found it

https://wendronstoves.co.uk/stoves-fires/wood-stoves/focus-2/slimfocus-suspendu/

I’m always of the (uninformed) opinion that if otherwise a building would fall down, so long as the outisde is sympathetically renovated, then whats inside doesnt really matter. At the end of the day, whether private house with modern internals, or boarded up derelict site with original and rotting features, the general public can’t see what’s inside.

The millstone tables were silly in my mind though.. mainly because they loooked highly impractical

All that history has now gone

All that history, that nobody gave a toss about, has now gone. (FTFY 😉 )

I thought it was one of the nicer ones, really liked it. Its all very well saying conserve this that or the other but they couldnt afford too. Much better than the usual rich **** with £100k to spend on a window.

I think it’s like they said on the show, the want to preserve the original features, vs the want of having a house. They wanted a house, they have a house. I also think they got lucky, that could have cost orders of magnitude more than I did, to get to the same outcome. I wouldn’t commit to sinking everything I had into that might leave me homeless, but with a lovely shed.

It’s a shame they didn’t use more sod the discarded wood as non structural decoration (I think they did a bit, but not much?) and I’m pretty sure they burnt the rest of it to piss Kev off.

Surprise at the thing that is designed to be big and heavy being big and heavy made me laugh too (the millstones)

It was a planning requirement that the millstones were incorporated inside the finished house.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the cheap wooden legs end up in the burner and the stanes end up in the garden.

The bottom line is that all these GDs are given lots of dramatic spin for the telly. If those timbers could have been retained they would never have got listed building consent to take them out and I’m sure that was known at the outset when they bought the place with LBC for the conversion.

As per comments above, I thought they did pretty well to do it for £300k as those floors looked like oak structures, not softwood.

Overall though I thought more Escape to the Country than Grand Designs. Good on them for rescuing a knackered listed building though.

£300k isn’t a lot of money for restoring a building of that size and structure, so expect it was down to their graft was where they saved some money.

I’d have recessed the old millstones recessed into the floor – that table was hideously impractical

Lack of insulation would make it a pretty cold house – fuel bill will probably be horrendous.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the cheap wooden legs end up in the burner and the stanes end up in the garden.

I would have used them to make a feature “statue” outside

Well Kev came across as a proper superior, sneering **** during that.

I think he’s got far too used to watching rich people just lob endless amounts of cash at things.

He seemed to have no understanding or sympathy for the fact that they couldn’t just go and shake the lower boughs of the money tree and magic up another half a million quid to apply a balm to His delicate aesthetic sensibilities

He’ll need to get back to his half million quid windows imported from Germany on some visitor centre that’s gone 2 million over-budget ASAP 🙄

I think at the start they said they would save most of the building and the internal wood. They obviously didn’t realise it would cost a fortune to do that.

I didn’t really get the tables, surely if planning says the millstones should be incorporated back into the house, that should be in the structure as they were before. Easiest to bed back into the floor/wall, but seeing as they had a round hanging stove, they could used one as a hearth.

Also I didn’t see any of the old cogs and pulleys apart from the one outside the front door, they could have been bolted back into the walls and new ceilings.

Quite liked the inside, in a alpine chalet way. The wood internally was a lost cause. It pretty much started to collapse when folk started working on the building.
Wasn’t really a fan of the outside, would a mill have been whitewashed? Looked like remnants at the start.
Stone tables were horrible I guess you could make it nicer with that epoxy filler an some of the old wood to make it rectangular but it’d be a bugger to move for hoovering.
I get KMc being all “I’m a purist” but as has been said. It’s easy to say when it’s not your budget.
They saved the building, the question of it being worth saving is secondary.

I liked it. Pleased there are still people who will take a risk like that.

All the talk about restoration was over the top imo. If the building had been been maintained over its life either timbers would not have needed replacing or they would have been cut out and repaired, just like Trigger’s Broom.

There is a lot of debate about Tally Ho or Hawker Typhoon JP843, are they replicas, are they restorations, are they rebuilds? Ultimately they (and the mill) are about saving something that otherwise would not exist. Anyone who is prepared to risk money/happiness trying to do that I’m willing to cut a little slack.

https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101312448-lametton-mill-st-keyne#.YBQblFX7SUm Grade 2 listed.

I really liked the outside, didn’t like the inside. Also thought it would be very cold and would twitchy about that un fixed culvert.

That being said, they seemed nice, and I was amazed they got that done for that budget given how many people were working at it at times – guess builders are cheaper in the SW!

Nothing in the planning about the mill stones that I can see – however they got permission in 2007! Been a while coming I guess! Also they somehow got permission to remove bats – quite surprised by that. Also they’re meant to have rebuilt a water wheel but didn’t see that in the programme.

https://planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/files/864CF680EAD7E93549499EEB70CE3E38/pdf/E2_07_01098_FUL-Delegated_Report-1030381.pdf

One of the conditions was get a historic statement comissioned, which gives some interesting history on the mill: https://planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/files/C4C6284F14C79D941A97847751AEF913/pdf/PA18_10704-WRITTEN_SCHEME_OF_INVESTIGATION_FOR_HISTORIC_BUILDING_RECORDING-4185627.pdf

Must say I’ve found this series to be quite good so far!