What is wrong with people who go on Grand Designs?

[RobynRB]

Seriously, time and time again it's the same thing. Why do people feel they need to build a house the size of a cinema complex and then moan when they run out money. Most of these things could be 10-20% smaller and you wouldn't even notice. Don't these people understand that materials like wood and concrete cost money so buy less of them and the house will be cheaper.

Speaking of which, last night was a classic case... we haven't got any money, but we bought this copper bath for our bedroom and this (frankly disgusting but I'm guessing ridiculously expensive) gold and black marble for our kitchen.

It struck me the reservoir building was big enough to build a reasonable house in, maybe with a smaller extension to the side. It certainly looked twice the size of my three bedroomed house on it's own.

And of course five minutes after they started they announced they were having a child. What brilliant timing...

My ‘favourite’ was a house not a million miles from us. They’d bought the site (with an old house in a particularly desirable location) for £1m IIRC, and fully expected to sell the end product for £5m.

Of course the new house was very ‘out there’ and weird - there was a big Sunday paper property feature on it - the couple were clearly super confident about making £££££ out of it.
It finally sold at least 2 years (if not 3) after first going on the market, for about £3.25k IIRC - of course we had a good old nose on nethouseprices.

The irony was, a much more traditional large house in that location would probably have achieved a price a lot closer to what they’d wanted - there were plenty of examples nearby.

It's poorly planned and managed. The "master vision" which shows tree lined streets, a high street, local coffee shops and grocery, pubs, etc etc is a joke. There are no trees on the streets, it's just a grid design, the are no shops and no building of shops and last I heard due to shitty landscaping companies and lack of planning a lot of the green areas have been cut down. Also, the whole ethos of the place was meant to be a self build dream with lovely, original houses and affordable self build plots, and while some of the houses are quite nice, the houses that the developer have put are small, ugly, low energy, shitty identikit houses you see all over the country. They didn't even try to do anything differently despite selling that idea to everyone who purchased a plot. On top of all of that you have to live in Bicester, I'm not sure if you have been before but it's a shithole. The town could have been nice but I think bicester village ruined it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-65188664

Oh that's disappointing.

Why do people put such huge houses on tiny plots? They are so close together you could be living in a terrace rather than boasting you are detached!

Yeah, that's the other part. I mean, they give you a plot passport and say you can only build up to a certain size, so none of those houses go above that size, however, if someone told you this is the biggest you can go you would prob build it that big instead of scaling it down. I only know of one person who didn't build to the boundary line and that's bc she wanted a bigger garden, the gardens are also tiny. Also, the house sizes aren't massive, I don't think any of the houses in that picture are more than 2000 square feet (185 square meters). I personally don't think that is very big, esp for a family. The house we are purchasing is much bigger than that and it's just the 2 of us.

I also wondered about toilets in Lucinda’s wooden house - composting loo, perhaps? I did wonder just how damaged tree roots would get by allowing one big delivery of the kit house bits. Surely the damage would be done by repeatedly driving over it, not by minimising faff by letting one or two big deliveries happen? I did like the house but raised an eyebrow when she said she’d spent her pension and didn’t know what she would live off. Maybe she was exaggerating, though.

I just wished they'd used the diff lock on the Land Rover, made me cross 😁

I did shout that at the telly 😁

I looked at the Graven Hill website and if you look at the site plan you can see what it actually looks like - it's just not very nice.

As Jin says the developer built homes are very ugly and the layout and landscaping looks horrible. The mish mash of others houses looks a mess and there's no obvious community amenities.

I agree with the minimum plot size passport.

I don’t particularly like this week’s episode. It’s just poor tv production when none of the houses finish because they chose people who didn’t have big enough budgets to actually build a habitable house.

Much more fun when they have £1m or something to spend! Otherwise it’s all a bit run of the mill.

I don’t mind the smaller budget ones, when they do finish the house, @ManyMaybes - I like seeing that you can build a lovely home without having a million pound budget - but the ones that don’t finish are very frustrating. The ones where they do have a huge budget and still don’t finish are the worst, for me - like the cliff top one. I look at those and think I could have built a lovely home for just a fraction of their budget.

I like a mixture of small and big budget. Lately seemed to have massive budget and a sudden loan out of nowhere. I think lower budget sometimes fits better with the neighbourhood rather than budget that presumably allows appeals for planning because I’m sure some are turned down locally.

I like the smaller budget ones, and I don't mind if they're not totally finished (like this week). What I hate is the ones where someone has got into their head that they want this massive house, while their spouse and kids are dragged along and have to live on a building site for three years. And then by the time it's complete the kids are off to uni and it's just two adults kicking around in this massive house.

The one a couple of weeks ago with the 2 girls who ended up with no bedroom was awful.

If they start filming four years ago, why not wait another year and show us the bloody houses finished? It's so they can 'revisit' in two years and get another show out of it. I'm almost inclined to watch the last 5 minutes and see if it's finished and if it is then watch it on +1.

Agree! I really wanted to see her kitchen!
I liked this episode, and the revisited treehouse one from this series. Both modest and fairly normal. Red house wasn't my favourite but I liked the daughters- they seemed nice and understanding.

I loved Lucinda's house in that it was very much her. Loved the little train.
She and her children looked attractive and likeable. i'd love to see the completed version.

I adored Lucinda and her lovely, helpful children ( looks balefully at mine). I thought her house was beautiful, like a piece of rare furniture. But so frustrated that the house wasn't finished. It really ruins it for me.

Imagine if they did a Steve and Claire do a self-build for them their two children, and build a largish house with a front door, regular-sized windows either side, no wood cladding, no mezzanine, no open plan... house, and it all ran smoothly and to budget.
The show would probably have been axed years ago.

Does Kevin ever say the end result is hideous?

Kevin never walks in and says ‘by Christ this is dreadful’ but he will say it in nice ways.

I do wonder what the shows hit rate is. Given how long these projects take and how fraught the process is. They must have had to abandon quite a few I'd imagine.

Our GD bingo includes windows ordered

from Germany and either don't fit because some idiot gave them the wrong measurements or they get delayed in some other way and the property ends up looking like a trendy office block or a library.

There's also the fact that you couldn't buy curtains for the stupidly big windows. I also wonder how they clean their double height ceilings.

This house is absolutely ludicrously enormous.

I think Liz is rather good fun though.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who wonders how they clean the high ceilings!

Speaking of which, it really irritates me when they build a massive house that looks like an office block then take up half the floorspace with a double-height atrium, leaving a relatively tiny upper floor with only two bedrooms.

Bets on this one being finished?

Sharp and different my arse its like everything on grand designs