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.

Did anyone see that obnoxious GD with the really rich couple who decided to build a super-house at the very end of a tiny Mews street? Even though the site was a) tiny b) completely overlooked and attached to a neighbours house, and c) had a train track running right underneath it?

The only access to the site was down this wee street, and for an entire year they brought huge honking heavy diggers lumbering down it. The space was so narrow that at one point the digger swung around and took a chunk out of the neighbours wall!

All of the neighbours objected - one who was interviewed even sold up because of the noise and dispruption! But the couple didn't give a shit cos it was their "dream home" and she had her heart set on her home movie theatre and her HOME NIGHTCLUB with a VIDEO FLOOR that cost £30,000.

The initial estimate was one year, but after one year they still didn't have planning permission cos it was such a dodgy plan. But they kept on digging anyway! So they eventually they got permission and the whole thing dragged on for another year. Kids went from being children to teenagers who'd been pulled around various rentals for 2 years. Daughter said "I just really want a home of my own now...."

They made the whole streets lives an utter misery for two whole years! And the house was shit in the end. It was tall and narrow and the kids bedrooms looked tiny, and there was a train hooting past the kitchen window every 15 minutes. But she got her fucking nightclub!

They were hateful weren't they. The disco floor was awful.

I also remember the one with a woman who was in Eastenders. They were living in a bedsit with two kids. The house was ok and they were nice enough but they built this house on a triangle of land behind houses and knocked down everyone's garden wall in the process.

I was going to mention the immovable table, but I see other people remember it too. How lovely Alistair Appleton didn't scream at that point I'll never know.

Does anyone remember the woodsman on Grand Designs, I think that was my favourite. Lovely cottage in the woods (obvs) he built himself, lovely wife, lovely babies lovely family (can you tell I loved them?!)

I love the way Kevin always finishes ends each piece with 'When Tristan and Cordellia told me about their plans to turn their kitchen and toilet into an openplan cooking and shitting area, decorated in a rococo designtheme I had my doubts, but on seeing the finished job I think it really works for them and they delivered it just over their 500k budget. '

compos i just howled at that!

An arose

I've been in that house. It looks straight onto train tracks, completely grim. The bedrooms are tiny. Everything now looks worn and awful, and they have a leak in their disco dance floor, around the mouldy water feature. What a bloody stupid idea to build a house over an underground tributary.

Argh, i meant Annarose! Sorry

MN meet up venue

MN meet up venue

I love GD, mainly because DH is an architect and he's spitting tacks by about 10 minutes in . We recently discovered GD Australia - same idiots on a whole new continent and a host who makes Kev look patient and unobtrusive!

Pipbin, yes, yes, that one stuck in my mind too - the tiny triangular site for which they pissed off the neighbours beyond all reason

What gets me about LLL in particular is the young couples, childless or with one small baby, who insist that they MUST have a mansion with 500 rooms and acres of garden. They turn their noses up at anything less, and then when presented with something that panders to their monstrous sense of self-importance, step inside and smugly say 'oh yes! This is much more like it! Yes, we might consider living here!’

Fuckers.

(Btw I lost all faith in KA & PS having any real idea what they were doing when, in a recent prog, they kept doggedly mispronouncing the name of the place their buyers wanted to live. Obviously they hadn't even spoken to anyone local, and the prog researchers hadn't bothered to check.)

onilkleymoor I loved that house! I think its Kevin's favourite as well.

I met Kevin once at an architectural awards dinner in birmingham. He gave an after dinner speech slagging off the architecture of birmingham. And wore red trousers.

I watch the Australian property location progs (forgotten what they're called I'm afraid) and the houses are all hideous, yet the couple viewing don't stagger around saying 'OMG it's horrible'. I'm coming to the conclusion that people who move to Australia have no taste.
Also, on a slightly different subject, there was this from the commentator
'now I know what [the woman] wants in the master bedroom. Yes it's size, and she's got it here' cue to woman going into raptures over large bedroom. Really though.

I think Dreadful Disco Floor woman is just barely trumped by Building a Georgian Mansion woman. Where the windows alone cost more than my mortgage, and they have an orangery on one end of the house, the most expensive wallpaper mortgage money can buy (hand painted by blind Tuscan voles, or something) - and at the end they have most of a house, sitting in a field of mud, because, surprise, surprise, there's no money left over for a packet of grass seed, let alone a landscaper!!

I really thought I'd seen every episode of Grand Designs but there's been a few mentioned that I can't remember. A good excuse to start working through them again I think!

My DH went to Grand Designs Live a few years ago and Ben Law (wooden house guy) was there. DH said he was lovely .

The Huf Haus GD episode was on TV last night.

Someone has already mentioned the one where they were confused with the table in the kitchen!
I was shouting at the telly "they will take it with them when they move for fucks sake"

I luffs George Clerke. Watch his programmes avidly. Any programme. He could sell me washing powder, I wouldn't care.

One episode of GD sticks in my mind years later. Woman was clearly a bit obsessed with Harry Potter. The house was dull on the outside, but inside they'd gone for insane stone fireplaces and a handmade staircase featuring individually carved gargoyles.

Naturally, it all cost a bomb and they ran out of money before they'd finished building, having pissed tens of thousands away on gargoyles.

At the end they showed the woman's poor father, who had been talked into giving her his pension fund so she could finish it.

It was hideous.

they ran out of money before they'd finished building, having pissed tens of thousands away on gargoyles.

That made me laugh like a drain for some reason and I am in a library. Of all the things to spunk your money on.

Sort of reminds me of the George Best quip 'I spent most of my money on fireplaces, gargoyles and staircases and the rest I squandered.'

I am clearly a horrible person, cos the news about the leak in the disco floor has made my day.

There was a leak on the disco floor? I must have missed that.
Made me grin too. Wrong isn't it.