To find these episodes of Location Location Location very funny

[Summerbreezing]

The ones where the couple want a house 'full of character', so Kirstie shows them a quirky cottage, a cleverly restored barn, and an old mellow farmhouse; which are all rejected on the grounds of 'too near the road', 'not enough garden', 'nowhere to store our six racing bikes' etc.

The couple then go off and 'discover' a three bedroom semi in a gated development at the edge of the village, put in a 'cheeky offer' and buy it. A few months later Kirstie has to go around for a visit and ooh and aah at their John Lewis sofa and homebase cushions and decking out the back and tell them how 'clever' they've been and how the made 'the decision that was right for them', and all the time you can almost see the bubble over her head thinking "WTF? . That lovely cottage was twenty grand less that this boring box".

Disclaimer: Can't afford to live in beautiful old farmhouse with antique furniture myself so not mocking semis and homebase. But I just saw a repeat of one of those programmes and it made me smile.

i cannot watch it - my green eyed monster goes wild

"Tobias and Tamara are both 22, have no discernable employment, and a budget of seventeen million pounds. Tamara is pregnant, so they're in search of at least six bedrooms to accommodate their growing family"

the best one was where some daft bint turned down a spectacular country cottage on the basis of "road noise". the camera had to zoom just so the viewer could see the road a several hundred yards away across the huge plot of land, and the solitary nissan micra driving sedately down it.

homes under the hammer is definitely more me.

One Location Location couple I remember snarking at were looking for a house in the country with lots of land - possibly to have space for horses - and found their perfect home, but it had a downstairs loo and they wanted space for a utility room they could put a washing machine in.

Kirstie came up with all sorts of ideas for creating utility space or moving the loo somewhere else but they just couldn't settle on a solution so they walked away from it.

I remember yelling 'noooooo you are fools!' But now we are building an extension, and guess what my biggest headache is? Yes, do we have enough room to fit in a utility area and a downstairs loo. Gah.

When I first met DH we very quickly bonded over a love of Grand Designs and mostly we agree on favourite episodes (the Huf haus of course, the charcoal burner in the wood, the young widow building her husband's dream home, which coincidentally is quite near my PILs) but there is one we don't agree on, a converted water works building which was in the middle of the woods.

I hated the building itself - the isolated location and utilitarian feel of the building made it seem really sinister and haunted - but I really hated the interior, which had wacky stuff like a Mini converted into a desk. But DH loves that one.

There was also a really annoying Location Location couple in Edinburgh who wanted a flat 'with its own front door', and eventually got one, a lovely flat admittedly, but when they redecorated, they ruined it inside and had lots of blown up enormous photos of themselves on the walls and a photo of their own bloody front door as they loved it so much.

I have to defend the programme makers a bit on the moans about the 'bolt holes' and 'pied a terres' - Channel 4 dropped Relocation Relocation several years back, and it doesn't get repeated much these days, I think. Nobody ever, ever buys the city pad anyway, so it was a pointless exercise, and I think the programme makers realised that showing a series of tiny studios and Barrett home one-bed flats that no-one ever bought was fairly dull TV.

I love Homes Under The Hammer, even though the male presenter is annoying.

I loved the LLL where the couple wanted to live on about three streets only, but no houses on that road were for sale. So they leafletted every house in the streets. One person let them have a look and gave them a price. They offered under that price and they looked all dejected.

Oh and the one where they found a house miles from anywhere, but a plane went over, really high, and she said, 'listen to that, we might as well be in the city'.

I agree with others though, where does everyone get their £750k budget from?

That gd barge was just awful from the start

pibin was that the one with the really snooty annoying wife who just couldn't be pleased no matter what?

With Grand Desings they have a budget and it ALWAYS goes over by tens of thousands. Where do people get the money from WHERE?!

Oh yes I remember the front door couple! Bless their annoying little loved up selves. I was amazed their inflated egos could fit through that door. Didn't they also want a house that all their friends would say "wow!" about? In other words shove their money in front of their friends' noses and say "look at us! We're richer than you! We're better than you!"

I just remembered an amazing Grand Designs. The couple doing up a place with restrictions on what bricks they could use. Next to a music school/orchestra rehersal place or something? They had to use London Bricks, it was in all the paperwork. They were pains in the arses, spat the dummy out on several occasions, got into all sorts of arguments with their neighbours over access because they kept willfully sticking scaffolding and stuff in the yard without permission and violating party wall agreements. And then they did the bloody work using the wrong bricks (because it was cheaper? Or would be quicker? I can't remember why) and made out like it was everyone elses fault when they were told they had to rip it down. It annoyed me but I can never quite bring myself to switch it off because I have to know what theya re going to do next.

Indrith yes the one with the bricks and the former violin factory (or piano factory?) was a classic. Also is one of the ones I have actually walked past in real life - in fact I was at a pub round the corner from that street last night.

You can't see very much of the precious London bricks from the street, but I can confirm they have a very nice local.

Haven't read the full thread (sorry!) so apologies if I'm repeating.

My favourite would have to be the couple who were looking round a beautiful, luxury house and seemed quite positive; then in one of the bedrooms the wife looked out of the window and said "Oh no, I can't live in a house that has a view over a street like that. I don't want to be seeing people like that every day."
...Cue a shot of a perfectly ordinary looking street of terraced houses. I was expecting teenagrer throwing grenades at the windows, drug dealers on every corner, etc; but the road looked quite pleaent to me

*This may not have been on location x 3. Escape to the country?

Yy, that is the one I was thinking about, pobble.

I also loved the violin factory one (although the finished article wasn't for me interiors wise) and the Sheffield waterworks one because the couple did the work themselves, it was such a labour of love and I thought it was quite spectacular at the end. Given that neither if them had any design or interiors experience, it managed to feel homely and comfortable despite the enormous industrial spaces.

Sorry the waterworks one was the couple doing it themselves, not the violin one. I liked that one for the sheer nature of the way the woman went about project managing the build.

I love these progs too, and Phil Spencer - I SO would.

Anyway, I know someone who was on LLL and apparently the participants have very little contact with Kirsty, all the house searches etc are done by researchers and on filming day she sits in the van reading the paper and only comes out at the last minute for her scene. She is as nice as pie to people on camera but wouldn't give them the time of day in real life. And apparently these people had quite specific requirements for their house, not unreasonable ones, and they were totally ignored by the researchers who showed them three totally unsuitable properties. At the end of the day it's TV entertainment innit, not really about finding people homes at all.

I've actually been in the Violin Factory one - it's cavernous.

I didn't like it at all, it had a really strange vibe and tbh it already looks a bit dated.

It had been hired out for an event I went to, but the couple were in (!!) so if you needed the loo you had to walk past them watching TV upstairs. 'Twas most odd.

Yes I often wonder how these people have such amazing budgets when they look like they can't even tie their own shoe laces never mind hold down a fabulous city job/own a multinational. (Where did I go wrong?)

The downsizes irritate me. Older couple with adult children want to downsize into a house that still has one bedroom for each of their 14 kids plus 2 extras for their home office/walk in wardrobe/collection of teapots. They get shown around a property with a bathroom bigger than my entire downstairs and claim it's a "bit small" and the amazing kitchen that's 3x the size of mine is "poky". Makes me want to scream "THATS DOWNSIZING YOU BASTARDS!!!" And how much space does a 60year old couple with no kids at home or pets actually friggin need anyway?

Oh the violin factory one is one of my favourites - seemingly quite nice Dutch banker husband hiding in his small leather bound study whilst ghastly wife madly bought anything expensive, including iirc a THIRTY GRAND cooker

I like the revisited LLL episodes where the couple have hated every property they've been shown only to have ended up buying a house that was 70k over their original max. budget.
Where the heck did they magic up all that extra money and if they had been on the show with the larger budget Phirstie would have been able to meet their 120 point checklist!

My favourite one was a couple for whom P & K had found a house in Grantham. It went to sealed bids and on their advice, they put in a huge offer and their offer was accepted.

Then it turned out that the Estate Agent mistakenly faxed through a list of all the sealed bid offers to their solicitor and their offer was about £200k over the next highest. Great advice there P&K!

Ooh yes the downsizers... But we still need room for everyone to stay (once a year at Xmas).
Buy somewhere with lots of living space near a hotel.

And why does everyone get pregnant while spending £500k on building a house on GD? Wait 6 months until the place is finished. It would be much easier.
Unless they're all Kevin's babies ?

I know it's slightly off track, but on Restoration Man one of the couple always discovered that they had a serious/life threatening illness halfway through the restoration. At least on GD you get a baby

I love Restoration Man and secretly fancy George Clarke. He seems such a nice man.

Two stick in my mind.

One where a couple from somewhere in England to Glasgow, where I live, with £250,000 at the height of the last property boom, who were stunned to find that they couldn't buy a mansion on that.

The other was a woman buying a beautiful Art Deco house and doing it up like a tart's boudoir in shocking pinks and blues, then being surprised that she couldn't sell it. She had spent four grand just on hand-painted tiles for a tiny toilet made in the cupboard under the stairs.

I've never seen Restoration Man but I have seen him in The Home Show and he does come across as a nice man.

I have a soft spot for LLL as it's the first programme of that type I saw. I'm another one who wonders where the hell these people get their money from.

I figure that living on a building site in a caravan must require lots of making your own entertainment , hence the very high fertility rate on Grand Designs

I'm amazed at the budgets on Escape to the Country too. You have a couple in their 50s planning on buying their first house together but neither need to sell their current property but they still have a budget of £750000! How??? Then the complaints that the huge kitchen / living room etc. are just too small / poky etc. Most people can only ever dream about that sort of house!

And why does everyone get pregnant while spending £500k on building a house on GD?
a friend of mine joked when going through fertility treatment that she should knock her house down and get Kevin round instead.

I also loved the Irish castle building one. The man was bonkers, hasn't bothered with an architect (sad face Kevin) and would sneak in at night and knock down interior walls the builders had put up that day. He'd built a bedroom which kev pointed out had no windows and was too small for a bed.
And the kne recently where they built the doorways for the kids bedroom at 3ft high for their pre-schoolers. Er, you know they get bigger? I can imagine two sulky teens crawling on the floor to get into their rooms.

Haven't watched LLL for a while, but I do wonder how 20 somethings get a housing budget of £750k which they can easily squeeze up by £30k because they fall in love with the apple tree in the garden.

I'd have kevin's baby .

I love how loose the budgets get on all those shows. and on lll kirsty showing she has no idea how mortgages work since she seems to think of you go under budget you will have a pile of cash waiting to do the work needed to the house. kirsty darling the bank will lend what the house is worth. You won't have cash left over, just a smaller mortgage.