Lets talk about Grand Designs last night. Who wants to live in a castle?

[sassy]

How mad was the bloke? How tolerant was his wife?
But that HOUSE! (swoon)

i thought they were both quite nice really, and passionate. (though i missed the first hour!)

Twas lovely, but I don't htink I'd like to live in it - imagine the heating bill!!

not me, I thought that house was ugly and unimaginitive when they'd finished.

The hall floor was utterly disgusting

was the best GD i've seen. what a transformation.

God it was beautiful wasn't it. And the view from that rooftop terrace.

But they were so broke at the end of it all - don't think I could cope with the financial worry!!

i was not mad on it...

Oh, I loved them both. and what a result.
PMSL at Kevin doing his utmost to predict doom and work up a bit of excitement when it really was obvious that the project was harmoniously managed and going to run out a winner.
I'd lay good money on Francis having worked for EH at some point, given his citing of Lutyens as a guru and his effortless instinct for making that old heap of rubble come alive so beautifully.
I missed the very beginning - what sort of practice did he have? And was his wife also an architect?

The best one imo was the one in Chesterfield, the old waterworks. The couple did everything themselves, it was a real labour of love, their first ever bash at developing and it was beautiful in the end.

They could make a blardy fortune from hiring it out for film sets.

Too true about heating bills.

But jones, they had a £300k mortgage. There are people living in very ordinary houses in London for that kind of outlay!

Would love to live in it - but would never have taken it on. OMG, I thought some of the "projects" we looked at were bad. That said, it was a lovely house but didn't look much like a castle to me when they had finished.

I liked the concrete water tank conversion. Barking, lovely couple, such an interesting building at the end.

Worst one: that deeply grating couple doing up a place in a courtyard and making everyone else nearby's life HELL.

This one

So many of the GD's are just people with loads of cash paying others to build a house for them, very few of the actual owners get their hands dirty (remember the £1m build cost London violin factory ?)

No. I wouldn't want to live in a castle.

Not now, not ever.

The only time I watched a Grand Designs that I liked was the one with the bloke who built that eco house.

Marina, that was the violin factory one. She was a tit

True NdeP, the waterworks was ace.
Was that the one with the sawn-in-half mini as a table? V cool.

My fave GD is the mad bloke with the wavy roof that leaked. we keep seeing revisited shows and it is still not finished! Begun c1942 when Kevin was still just a wee spermatoza, that's how long its been going on.

NDP, I think the violin factory one was the couple I absolutely loathed
Did they seriously piss off an orchestra nearby?

x-posted. Dh goes on and on about her kitchen table costing more than his annual salary. I think it rankles rather.
I so hope they failed to get retrospective planning permission and had to pull the sodding wall down, truly

Yes, not just any old orchestra either, I think it was a biggie

I pmsl when that £50k (or was it £30k?) oven thing arrived and it didn't bloody work, it was still broken when Kevin went back to see it in it's final glory

sassy, that bloke was mental with the veneered gullwing roof

I remember the chief exec being quietly, politely, unmistakeably livid and contemptuous about them, and Kevin being curiously unwilling to contradict him
I did like the eco one too Expat
Especially the romantic happy ending

As an archaeologist I was mighty peeved about Kevin?s constant digs (pun intended!) about the need for archaeological work ? it?s castle for frick?s sake!!

What got me about the violin factory couple was that their £35K cooker didn't work - if that was me (as if ) the engineers would be locked in until they fixed it - they clearly never actually used or intended to use the bloody thing!

She was an architect as well, which made me think I would never use her - whereas last night's guy, although clearly nuts, was the sort of architect I would use.

I thought he was a bit snide about that too