Grand Designs et al

[dontcallmemam]

How come they start the programme with a budget of X? Then halfway through there's always sole searching about lack of funds but at the end it's cost X x50% but they've finished it. And put lots if swanky furniture in.
Is there a magic money fairy and how do I find one?

I think (from my own experience) the problem is that there's a lot that you can't not do (e.g. you can't decide not to have guttering) , so you just have to delay the project and save / beg / borrow / steal the money. You don't see people saying 'in order to buy the new guttering, we'll hope the car gets through another MOT and not go on holiday this year'.

Dunno, but I would love to find out. Credit card maybe?

We have begged, borrowed and stolen (not really stolen) to get a small amount to repair our chimney but there may still be a problem that goes over budget - so we didn't do adults Xmas presents, I didn't get a 40th birthday present, DH won't get his present and it is likely that we will have to forgo our planned cheap UK holiday this year. Again. And still face the very real possibility that we need to keep a bucket in the loft to catch the remaining drips.

If you find the money fairy, please send her this way!

Maybe they're told to panic about the budget to make better telly? Then, during the ads, they can get the spare £100K out from under the mattress.
I'm hoping someone who's been on one of the shows will come along.

It's because most of the people on these programs are pretty well off and if you've got money already it's easy to access more. You can get loans, credit cards etc. Not an ideal way of financing a project so you wouldn't include it in the initial budget, but it's money that's available. If you're well off you also tend to have various savings pots and investments which you wouldn't want to cash in to build a house, but you can do so in an emergency.