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 am so sad I missed this show, better check Tivo in case it recorded it.

I have advised my brother to apply to appear on the show since it only took them 4 months to get permission for scheduled ancient monument building whatever from EH and my parenst have been waiting two years to renovate and old mill

BabiesE, it's repeated on More Four today? tomorrow? again, anyway...

Message withdrawn

before you all get excited about being able to do that sort of massive restoration project for £600k, can I just tell you that I've had it from the horses mouth that Francis, who is an architect who works on all sorts of major project slike, um York Minster, had all those masons and everyone working at VERY reduced rates and he got the stone for about £40,000 when the retail price was £150,000 etc etc etc.

And he managed to get EH to cave in by bringing C4 to his meetings and telling them it would be a PR disaster if they were seen to be allowing that place to fall down on telly.

So don't even think about those prices/that timetable bearing any resemblance to reality!

I did think it sounded suspiciously cheap - and the point at which he said he "knew some people" in the relevant govt department was a bit of a clue!

As I said - I would employ him if I could (a) afford a wreck and (b) afford him!!

That would explain alot PPH.

DH and I were convinced you couldn't complete a project like that for less than £1,000,000.

chocolateshoes, I love Kevin too, especially when one programme was in France and he started blethering away in fluent French - swoonerama!

Am so cross I missed this - does anyone know if its repeated anytime soon ?

We all loved this programme.
DS2 has been drawing plans for his dream house all day.
DH and I are being located in our own wing , with a library and an office.
DS2 and his brother are having four bedrooms, a cinema, a bowling alley, an arcade, ensuite bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool, and a quadbike track outside.
His initial costings of "about twenty thousand, I expect" may have to be revised early in the process.

it is repeated tonight on more4 at 10 oclock

oh great 2shoes - thanks v. much. Thats dinner decided then. Pizza in front of television. marvellous.

i'm guessing that the GD houses look bare/stark inside because the owners have run out of money by the time they move in, and the stylists make them remove all their old tat for the filming. The castle's kitchen was suspiciously free of gadgets, no wonder she was swigging the wine

They did have some great furniture in there, though.

I still can't decide whether I really like it or not. Some of it was fab, but from the outside it was a very forbidding looking house, and not very castle-like. It looked more like a remote, scary orphanage from Victorian literature. I usually disagree with Naomi whats-her-name on principle because I find her annoying, but she was right about the hall floor being wrong for the rest of the building.

I wonder how those stone-masons really coped, they didn't get much of a chance to speak to camera did they, and they were working in some appalling conditions. There's something very attractive about a strong man who works with his hands . Are they the same stone masons who worked on that farmhouse on the side of a valley? They looked quite familiar.

Your inside knowledge confirms all of my suspicions pph.
I still thought he was cute though

I hate GD with that soft twat commenting like Jilly bloody Goulden does on wine about houses integrity and suchlike
But that was awesome, beautifully done, equisite
I'd sell kids (well the oldest one to raise the cash to live in) not many house I'd pay £1m for but that would be one

Yeah I choked whne he said £400k to restore it
More like £1m minimum
4 masons on site for a year plus.
Dream on

I thought the castle was fab , the sheer size of it ! , and the views are like 'wow' ! but seems odd having a penthouse style to it on top - spoils the history of the castle i think . yes that bath was ghastly ! , its like a coffin - no way i would want to bath in it - a rolltop would have been better!.
yes i agree that guy from e heritage was a twat ...does he not realise that we need to move with the times now ?
Kevin - good looking ?!! come on !!he's abit geeky ...now if it was George Clooney ..oh yeah !..

I thought the wife last night was very quiet. I bet she's quietly seeting with hatred of the whole bloody business.....

No, I'd hate to live there. Wouldn't mind a weekend break but not to live. It was too spooky. Imagine being on your own there or driving up to it at night with just a glimmer of light showing in one of those small windows.

As the husband was lime washing all that was going through my mind was the thought of how long it would take to decorate. And I didn't like that massive stone thing in the kitchen.

I love Kevin's gobsmackedness at the end of each episode. He's always totally amazed that the project is finished and he's "never seen anything like it".

Did you see the bit at the beginning when she explained that their wedding cake was in the shape of a castle? So she was slightly forewarned about his castle dream.

Wedding cake in the shape of a castle.

FGS