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AIBU?

To be driven crackers by the people on Grand Designs?

250 replies

CruCru · 11/09/2013 22:36

On the episode today, the couple have sort of fallen out with all their neighbours. The project is over budget (by more than £200k) and over deadline. The guy has sold his business to finance the project and no longer has work to support the family. And they all seem to live in the one studio flat.

Argh! I couldn't bear it.

OP posts:

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Damnautocorrect · 12/09/2013 14:12

I loved the George Clark one where the woman converted the loos into a flat, they were fab!
Big gd fan, loved the outdoor living room in disco divas house, the fire place chimnea thing was brilliant.

Ilovemyrabbits · 12/09/2013 14:23

I liked the brutalist concrete house in Thorne in Doncaster. Pissed me off that they kept saying, how great it was to be happening in a place like Thorne! Like anyone in Thorne had two heads and one braincell. (Disclaimer...I don't come from Thorne, I just object to people thinking GD houses should always be in leafy suburbs or Landon).

Fifilosttheplot · 12/09/2013 14:42

We loved the couple who bought the pumping station and basically did everything themselves as they clearly didnt have two pennies to rub together, they dismantled all the massive pumps and were knocking flaking paint off it on Christmas day. They ended up with a huge house with half a mini as a desk - they were really cool.

Also howled laughing at the violin factory woman who upset every neighbour (to the point of legal action from memory) then spent £35,000 on a cooker which didnt work.

ubik · 12/09/2013 14:46

another favourite (for all the wrong reasons) was horrendous basement dug-out underneath a lovely building, where the woman decided she was going to 'project manage' her 'build' and it ended up with the contractor walking out, her husband ageing about 20 years, literally grey with the strain of financing it. They gotr another contractor - a sort of builder James Bond - to sort it out and they ended up with this rabbit warren of subterranean concrete n' glass rooms complete with leather-walled gym sited in the very bowels of the earth.
How desperate must you be to live in a particular part of London, to go through all that?

I love GD

allmycats · 12/09/2013 14:57

I really liked the 2 women artists in Scotland who built a lovely, normal property - Good Luck to them.

I do know what Thorne is like and believe me they were very brave spending that sort of money where they did.

Pascha · 12/09/2013 15:13

My favourite was the one in france where the older couple just bought a dilapidated manor house off the internet without even seeing it, sold up and moved out there to spend a year or more hand-pointing the stone and laying floor joists by themselves without seeemingly having much of a clue. Even though they are obviously barking mad I did like them very much. They just seemed so happy.

Crowler · 12/09/2013 15:14

ubik I know the one you're talking about, it was Holland Park and that woman was horrible.

NorbertDentressangle · 12/09/2013 15:16

Re: last nights episode - DP and I reckon that the wife was barely holding it together by the end. She was acting (after all, it is/was her profession daaaahling) and if you looked beneath all that there was a woman on the edge, about to crack.

There was one bit when Kevin mentioned finances or budgets and you visibly saw her hackles rise.

Not a couple I warmed to I'm afraid.

I love it when the couples are lovely and come out of it with their dream home and their sanity intact .

Crowler · 12/09/2013 15:17

Was there ANOTHER new GD last night?

I saw the converted cinema one a couple of weeks ago, that was the first new one I'd seen in years.

GwendolineMaryLacey · 12/09/2013 15:24

The violin factory was the one that royally pissed me off. And you know what they did with it? They rented it out for functions. The fuckers. Dream house my backside.

Crowler · 12/09/2013 15:26

The violin factory people didn't come across well, if I remember correctly. That was east London right?

GwendolineMaryLacey · 12/09/2013 15:28

Somewhere like that. She was a pain in the arse, he was a tit, they had a massive falling out with the orchestra next door and she spent about £12,000 on a kitchen tap. And it wasn't even nice when they'd done it.

sophiedaal · 12/09/2013 15:34

She was a pain in the arse, he was a tit, they had a massive falling out with the orchestra next door and she spent about £12,000 on a kitchen tap. And it wasn't even nice when they'd done it.

And that, folks, is Grand Designs in a brilliant nutshell. [applause]

Crowler · 12/09/2013 15:37

Yes, I remember.

People on GD would do well to remember that all their bitching in the foreground as the laborers toil in the background doesn't translate well.

MinesaBottle · 12/09/2013 15:38

I love shouting at watching Grand Designs, sadly as my DH is an architect he refuses to have it on so I have to wait till he's not around!

MinesaBottle · 12/09/2013 15:38

I love shouting at watching Grand Designs, sadly as my DH is an architect he refuses to have it on so I have to wait till he's not around!

EldritchCleavage · 12/09/2013 15:51

Also howled laughing at the violin factory woman who upset every neighbour (to the point of legal action from memory) then spent £35,000 on a cooker which didn't work

Was coming on to post the same. DH and I sniggered all the way through that one. Especially when they got the special brick artist in to paint the new bricks to look like to old bricks to satisfy planning and the orchestra people.

If I ever retrain it will probably be as a brick painter for people with more money (ad ego) than sense.

froken · 12/09/2013 16:07

I think the program I am remembering was grand designs ( but could possibly be another program)

There was an episode where they sold their perfectly nice family home, bought a dilapidated Welsh farmhouse, gave up their jobs and aimed to be self sufficient. They had a small child who they decided to home educate.

They lived in a caravan for years, it rained all the time and after about 2 years they had a scruffy leaking kitchen and had spent all their money on food. They still lived in the caravan and the child looked very glum all the time :( I actually wondered how much worse it would have to get before social services stepped in their lifestyle choices and priorities really shocked me.

gindrinker · 12/09/2013 16:08

I'm sure its Kevin who gets the women pregnant.
He wants to take over the world with his McCloud master race.

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 12/09/2013 16:09

WhereBeThatBlackbirdTo - you took the words right out of my mouth it musta been while you were kissin' me! I was coming to ask if anyone knew what had happened to the Georgian house lady.

I didn't hate last night's couple too much - though I did feel a bit sorry for the nanny, who is going to be stuck in a subterranean bedroom.

Did we ever get a proper answer to Kevin's question about how the chap's Eco-principles stack up with all the concrete they used? Though at least it was mostly covered up.

And it was just asking for trouble, to put a door between the girls' bedrooms!

Crowler · 12/09/2013 16:13

Oh my god the Georgian house lady was possibly the worst ever.

ubik · 12/09/2013 16:13

Was the Georgian house lady the one where it ended up looking like a bloated Barratt home with a huge roof, like a child's drawing of a house? And Kev hated it?

I have never see that episode repeated.

Did we ever get a proper answer to Kevin's question about how the chap's Eco-principles stack up with all the concrete they used? Though at least it was mostly covered up.

I think the answer ws that the the eco-cost was offset by the fact that the house was heated by the...wait for it..the swimming pool! Arf!

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Crowler · 12/09/2013 16:26

I'm sure its Kevin who gets the women pregnant.

Bwahhhh!
I feel certain he's is banging every woman who appears on GD.

SonorousBip · 12/09/2013 16:31

It all gets very identi-kit, I think, for the reasons everyone has mentioned and I sort of feel it is getting more so - it felt like there was a bit more diversity in the earlier series.

There was one that stuck in my mind about a guy who was building/renovating a smallish outbuilding on, I think, family farmland in the Welsh borders so that he could move in with his fiancee who was, I think a nurse. (It was up a steep slope and everything had to go up by quad bike). I remember when they did the "reveal" at the end it wasn't really finished but they had lots of tea lights in jam jars out and were sitting talking with a glass of wine about all of their plans for the future and it was really sort of what it was all about. But now it seems to be lots of the same type of people and the same type of houses.

Also remember a lovely interesting older couple - in their 70's - who moved into a Huf Haus, which was also nice.

Bearing in mind how long the lead time is, we always wonder how many they have started and never make it through the process. There was a funny one where we noticed the guy had one live in girlfriend when he started the project and another one by the end.

I am hard as nails but I think I actually cried when on the update show the charcoal guy was talking to Kevin, and then a woman and small baby walked into shot...

Havea0 · 12/09/2013 16:35

I remember the Henley one too. It looked awful. Totally out of keeping with the rest of the houses.

And the underground disco one. Why would you do that?

My biggest gripe[or stronger] with the programme is all the couples who couldnt care less if they annoy or fall out with their neighbours. Most of them seem to have no respect for regard for them at all.

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