[Closed] Grand Designs

Pregnant wife - tick

FFS is it a condition of being on he show?

I think the pregnancy thing is the partner's incentive to get the damn thing finished, or else!

living in a caravan while work stops over winter; good grief, this one is going to tick every single box going...

Budget blown early on - tick

Oops!

It's gorgeous though - and I don't mean the baby.
Still wouldn't live in Kent however.

Wonder what the porn content of the recycled paper is - classic. 😀

i do think that this is going to be a very nice house, yes.

That ach looks awesome inside

fab house - love the staircase, although the nipper will definitely fall off it. Quite visionary use of materials and design.

[img] [/img]
please stop it

[i]although the nipper will definitely fall off it.[/i]

Yeah I thought that.

Liked the junk and resin floor. Arch looked great

parabollocks more like

curtains? blinds?

oh! I could live with a house that pays me £1800.00 a year rather than gives me elccy bills!

who gets the prize for the silliest haircut????

KEVIN!!!

and yeah, i could live in that.
if it was in wales. or manchester. or the lakes.

"it are heroic"

kevin seemingly does his best to ruin the programme every single time though...

Open plan loo? Not for me. Be nice to share the whiff of your guests deposits on a Sunday morning....

is it just me or did the guy look like Gary Sinise?

I could live with a house that pays me £1800.00 a year rather than gives me elccy bills!

Yeah but how much extra did they have to pay for the build in order to achieve that? From a financial perspective I suspect the rate of return is too low. Actually, they spent so much on the place - mainly the arch and windows - that I'd like to know if the house is worth as much on the market as it cost to build; it seems to me that usually self-builds include a profit once finished.

Good house, amazing vision and nice mum!!!!

Nice house, mad/fun/different/liked the architecture - but silly mahoney to build, impractical to live in a lot of that space.

I am not sure it will meet Passiv Haus stuff on-going - and £1800 a year, errrr, no it won't. There is a reason most Passiv Haus look like boxes, and few have as much glazing as they did, few have cavity walls like they did, and very few have big arches and high areas, few have bathrooms and sinks and kitchens at different ends of the house etc....

Nice and airtight though 🙂 we need more of that.

I have a theory about the preganancys.

All of the kids [u][b]all of them[/b][/u] are uncle Kevs have you noticed none of them are up the duff when the programme starts. Just one smile from Kev and they melt. He must have dozens of the little blighter's all over the country!

1800 quid a year return only works out at 247 years to make your money back, assuming that there are no other bills in the mean time!!

To be honest I liked how it looked, but still not overly sure of how stable it'll be.

What happens if the air/poo smell recycling unit packs up when they're asleep, as the house is "air tight" wouldn't the CO levels go up rather rapidly or is the space too big for it to matter?

I'd love it if he had this mego eco-friendly giving back house and a Range Rover Vogue with a V8 petrol engine parked out back 😆

Budget £300,000

Arch needs 250,000 hand made locally-sourced tiles and building, by hand, tile by tile. Which will cost about how much of that budget?

But of course - he's an architect so doesn't have to concern himself with budgets...

I liked that resin floor though. We're doing our kitchen and can't decide on flooring, wonder how much it costs?

Why spend a packet building a self supporting arch if you're going to have 2 flanking walls that could just as easily support it? It'd be trivial to keep the same finishes inside & out but have a lot less faff with the construction. The only reason for doing it would be so that you can dismantle the sub-structure and leave the arch in situ, but he was never going to do that. And IMO the interaction between the curves and the rectilinear form of the rooms was quite jarring, especially inside - too many ideas, too little critque.

I want to know what is 'eco' about that resin floor...its amazing what BS people buy into...

thepurist - Member

Why spend a packet building a self supporting arch if you're going to have 2 flanking walls that could just as easily support it

As Boris would say, Architect having a w*nk off?

[cough] Architect spending his own money in getting to build and live in what he wants rather than pandering to IT network engineer's lowest common denominator [/cough]

🙂

This new series ain't doing it for me.
Architect + money = dull.
It's up there with 'Stars in their eyes' now.

See I'm going to watch a programe about a geezer from Basildon building a rocket to go to the moon. But not one about NASA doing the same, if you know what I mean?

I'd like to think I could do better. I probably couldn't.

I'm not the only one with the "Uncle Kev" baby threory then...

I'm gonna tell my GF about this 'Uncle Kev' theory. It's been a mystery for her so far, but this should explain all.
Nice one.

Wasn't keen on it at first but they created something really special for them I think as well as some decent materials. The "carbon neutral" tag is bullshit though. Won't use any carbon when lived in but those tiles have a fair chunk of carbon embodied in them.

And yes, I am an Architect.

As for the cost involed with the eco measures. It may be generating £1800 now but that figure will surely rise. Energy isn't going to get cheaper for quite some time now is it.

I have no problem when it's "experts" behind the bill. I watch it out of interest in the building more than the 'drama' so want to see new building ideas more than I want to see innocents struggling.

I guess it's also hard to find any real empathy or engage with some people on there who are obviously so filthy rich that it really doesn't matter to them.

The people who struggle by and make it something truly special are the good ones.

I've seen a few developments where some of the rooms are boxes within a larger space. I suppose I'm too function oriented but I'd like to be able to use the space over the rooms for storage or whatever. Guess they get dusty on top too....

This series has majored on smug wealthy gits throwing silly money around to build monstrosities... That folly last week with the lego welded to it and now this pointles tile infested thingy... OK so last night's bloke wasn't quite up to the 'total smug git standard' and the mummy was verging on yummy which redeemed the prog (a bit).

But, a £300k budget for something as daft as that which then overan by 50%!!! Not sure what the original build schedule was but wouldn't be surprised if that overan too (and not all cos someone 'leant' on the roof).

I wanna see someone struggle to pay for a decent build and put their heart and soul into it. We've seen them in the past, it's just throw more wonga at tastless tat now.

Harumph!!

But it is titled Grand Designs, so by definition it will be well-off people spending lots of money. Apart from the couple from Rotherham years back who bought an old water pumping station for £40k and could only afford to paint over the crumbling whitewashed plaster.

I suppose they could do a spin-off called 'Average Extensions' or Splash n Dash Makeover'

I agree its good to see some different design - I think the standard of our 'barrat homes' (aka average new home) from a design point of view is woeful.

We 'love' our brick, white upvc and fake victoriana - I want to see creative, modern design.

Last night, while it was not 'my bag' and could / was an architect showing what he could do (just because he could) at least had some good design and was original.

For me, GD is 'unusual', but if it moves the design world on and the publics expectations (like why should a new house cost so much to heat?), then its a good thing.

mastiles_fanylion - I think this one is an example of the sort of stuff many of us prefer to watch - money was an issue for them but they created something rather special:

[url= http://www.channel4.com/4homes/on-tv/grand-designs/episode-guides/puglia-the-villa-08-06-04_p_1.html ]Puglia[/url]

[img] [/img]

Yep Mudshark that's the one. And the pumping station, not to mention the nutter in the woods...

I'm all for modern challenging design but most recent stuff has been formulaic and built at vast (i.e. any) cost.

I like the stuff that is a bit off beat.

I've loved most designs, mainly because the people behind them are doing it with passion, and want something different. Come on, how much is spent on the average Premier wendyballers tasteless monstrosity? My favourites so far have been the Pumping Station, (loooved that), the Apprentice Store outside Bath, and last nights. The Folly at Newport as well, if only for that staggering view, but I loved much that went into that house, especially little details like the restored windows. Criticising these builds because they cost a lot of money is pointless. OF COURSE they cost a lot of money, anything with a lot of time and materials is going to. Might as well do the same about a custom made bike frame, when you can pick up a perfectly good frame for £150. It does the same job, but it wouldn't be custom or special to the owner, would it?

The baby thing is all part of the nesting instinct. These lucky few get to do the nesting bit full on!

They say that pregnancy can make you do some funny things - strange rituals and odd eating habits etc. Probably not the best time to be embarking on a hellishly expensive construction project!

Quite amusing really.

The worst for me, was the solicitors who ripped out the interior of a great looking Victorian Terrace to make one big open plan hole to live in!

Loo without a door stuck between the living room and kitchen, from what I remember, class!

Did like the fish tank wall though, which I think was from the same property?

Criticising these builds because they cost a lot of money is pointless.

That's not the point; some think that those that have to watch the pennies result in a more interesting development than those that get the experts in to build up their dream. I've just remembered the one in France where an older couple did most of the work to restore a tower that had all but fallen down. Watching them work out how to do things was far more interesting than a load of pro builders getting on with their jobs. The end result may be interesting but the journey's important in terms of the show.

Didnt the No water mill, from a couple of weeks back have the smallest kitchen ever seen, if i remember correctly? Smaller than my first houses, which could have fitted into one room there. That man was a little eccentric to say the least.

I thought the arch looked pretty good inside, but couldn't help thinking that if it was mine I'd spend the rest of my life wondering if the inside of the arch would have looked better with the tiles laid at an angle. I think those brick railway / canal arches where the bricks are laid at an angle give fantastic spiralling/sweeping lines to their arches...

I watched the re run of the old couple building the Hauf House?!? Ok it's probably tame by GD standards, but there was something about the couple and their build.
Liked the bit about it seeing them good for another twenty years, then looking at each other 'ok ten then'
They also filled the place with the belongings/their life, no instant interiors there.
It was proper heart warming.

^^^^^
Yeah I loved that one too - wasn't he an artist/sculpter or something? Domolished what most would consider a pretty decent house to make it?