Who's watching the Home Show on channel 4?

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

They want an extra 77K on top of the 100K cheque the owners have already given him?? He does this every week. It's

i like this programme, hoewver it pisses me off that he goes back to ask them for more money - and sometimes asks 2 or 3 times.

i do think the sums are outragous.

15% of the budget is eaten up by VAT.

Does that mean that you pay the VAT when you buy the kitchen/bathroom/building supplies and pay VAT on your builders bill then you also have to pay 15% to the VAT man for the total spend on the budget ?

Oh, I knew there'd be a thread about this Why don't people say "This is our budget, now do what you can with it". And agree, why does he have to replace all of your furniture? That's where teh money must be being wasted on.

No, sausage. You just pay VAT on the supplies and the labour. You don't pay it again.

You pay VAT on all the goods (RSJs, windows etc) and on the builders' bill too. My DP is a builder and is still trying to work out where the money went - especially considering the kitchen was already bought. Plus, he can't believe the builders don't get trade price for the stuff and pass that onto the clients.

I think he now wants a job with George as they're all clearly getting paid a fortune!

The sofas in their 'old' living room were perfectly fine, not offensive colours, modern shapes, good condition. He replaced them for the sake of it.

I hope the family got plenty of £££ for the furniture they sold 'on the internet' (ebay, presumably).

Thanks for clearing the VAT thing up girles

I was outraged at last week. No wonder the bloke was so pissed off esp as it was George's fault!

We build a two storey extension which included a new kitchen and two new bathrooms. We also had a new patio and drive done. It cost 120k and added about 150k. The kitchen alone cost 25k and my bath in the ensuite was 4k so all the building work came to about 90k. A single storey extension with new bathrooms and kitchen tops should have cost about 50-60k.

There is no way they have got value for money and will not have added 150k to their house value. They are probably paying over the odds for daily rate builders doing it at short notice. Plus all the new furniture.

This has become car-crash telly, hasn't it? (and Location, Location's back next week, hoorah!). Couldn't agree more that last night's eventual spend was utterly unbelievable.

And last week, with the non-existent en-suite....FFS, how much does it cost to buy a plain, perfectly acceptable white suite and some decent tiles, for a small bathroom (which it was)? Not much. But George and his chums installed a humungous deck out the back instead, which the family certainly didn't need, and then said they couldn't afford the en-suite .

Barking.

Maybe due to recession both Channel 4 and Georgio are in dire straits. And this is a ruse to take hard earned money from poor sausages that don't have the time or inclination to renovate themselves.

They also installed an expensive garden office building as a playroom. That would have been at least £10,000 when a normal insulated shed/summerhouse would have sufficed at a generous cost of £2,000.

He can only do one 'look' it seems amd it is all stuff which really dates.the hideous wallpapered wall behind the bed is the worst!

I agree, dp who is also in the trade couldn't believe how much it all cost and where the money went. Especially with the kitchen already pre-purchased.
We would have used the spare 177k to move for sure!

It is all one look every week. awful

What would you call it? 'the mid-range high street design' look

It is very b and q looking.The stylist has no clue all those nasty cushions and cheap paper and no decent art or furniture really.Too staged and nothing relating to the people living there.It would be like moving into a department store!They could have moved to a better house you're right

It is weird that that look has become synonymous with the idea of 'designer'. It is so generally accepted that a great big glass coffee table will dominate the room, overstuffed with sofas, cushions and pieces of fabric, accent colours and feature walls.

That the dining table will have some revolting feature that links it to the doors or floor or something, and that folding back doors are the last word in comfortable living.

Thank goodness for the existence of proper Georgian properties sighhh

I have a normal period terrace with no gimmicks and I love it.Viewed 25 houses in suburban hell with my parents and 99% had feature walls and fake fires!

I'm always baffled by the fact that their previously over-stuffed houses are pared down to a few rather naff stylist-chosen artefacts (giant Buddha's head, anyone?).

Do people really agree to throw all their possessions away? Why does nobody ever have any books?

It'd be nice to see a bit more personality in the designs, rather than sticking to a cliche of a Barcelona chair, some gloss kitchen units and 'feature' wallpaper

www.livingetc.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=5058 I love this look for open plan

My house is pretty minimalist, we have books but they are not on display. We're not really a clutter family (even with 3 kids, 2 cats and 2 guinea pigs) but I would say that our interior design choices are personal to us. Erring on the side of minimalist does not have to mean soul-less white box with uncomfortable 'architectural' furniture.

Noddy - did you do your navy and grey room in the end ?

Brilliant - i've not seen this week's yet. Is it really awful? Does it have bifold doors?

I'm also loveing Property Snakes and Ladders and cheered when the gits who began by removing the ceilings and fireplaces from the Grade II listed building lost thousands of pounds while the other couple that did a sympathetic job made a fortune. Hooray and serves the stupid fireplace-ripping tossbuckets right.

p.s. I have no books in any of my rooms. They are all in the library. Libraries are the ultimate in real luxury. And now I'm hoping to remove tedious wardrobes and bathrooms to create a second library. Hooray!

I love the idea of an estate agent trying to get their head round a house with two libraries and no wardrobes - except in Cambridge, it would probably be snapped up immediately.

at Grendel