Current Series of Grand Designs - September 2024 - are you watching?

[Fifiesta]

Firstly apologies - I couldn’t find a current thread, hopefully I didn’t miss one.

Are any of you on here watching this series? There have been two episodes already, each interesting in different ways.

Last nights episode (3), ‘Keighley 2024’ with Kara and Jonny was exceptional, on so many different levels.

Kara and Jonny were not blest with larger than average budget we have come to expect in this programme.
They are honest, pleasant, decent folk from Yorkshire, with a loving caring family, Kara is exceptionally bubbly.
Their lives were dealt a life-changing, bolt out of the blue, several years ago, leaving Kara wheelchair dependant,
The episode this week features their quest to build an accessible ‘homely home’, that does not feel clinical, while still giving Kara the independence she needs.

I believe they succeeded in spades, the result was a masterclass in good taste, and good judgment.
If ever a family deserved to win through in the face of so many challenges, I am glad it was them.
So glad I watched it.

Such an inspirational tale, hats off to them all.

Thanks for the prompt - I will try to find it on Catch up, sounds a good episode.

I think people post this sort of stuff in TV addicts forum normally so there may be a Grand Designs thread there.

Hi - I have already asked Mumsnet to move it - obviously I was not properly awake this morning ! 🙄

• but thanks for replying!

I wonder if mums netters have mostly given up watching these types programmes?

Perhaps the huge time lag involved in large building projects, has meant that for normal families living in the current financial and housing reality, it has lost any relevance, or even entertainment value?
Maybe too many of the projects seem like total hubris now?

This weeks was so good though, well worth a watch.

Anyone watching tonight's episode?
The couple seem a bit too tree huggy and delicate to actually build a house!

Yes I did, though I missed most of the last ten minutes, so in order to comment fairly about their project and motivation, I need to catch up with the last part tomorrow.

I really did hate the exterior wood cladding, it was wicking up the rain like a pair of floor length flares. It didn’t look like would stand the test of any time at all…

Last nights episode gave me the rage! Bloke who waits until his 60s (I think, missed a bit of the early spiel) to address his childhood trauma and then does it at the expense of his wife's health and their financial future.

Running a retreat is hard work and starting a business at their stage of life and health to ensure an income stream is crazy. That size of plot could have been sold for a fortune near Henley, especially if they had planning permission, then they could have bought a lovely flat or two and had a nice cash sum to fund their future.

And who would buy that house in the future? Effectively its a small block or apartments but without independent access, and would be hard to rearrange into a family home without very significant work.

Aargh

We're still watching every episode! Although, we're so busy in the week that DH and I save Grand Designs for Sunday nights as it feels very Sunday night-ish viewing.

So we haven't watched last night's yet, but we loved Kara and Jonny the week before - it was the best of Grand Designs imo where you get ordinary people with a relatively ordinary budget doing what turned out to be an amazing build in very difficult circumstances.

I actually really liked the couple from the week before that as well - I thought they were potentially going to be totally up themselves, but actually they were pretty down to earth and I loved that they did big chunks of it themselves and decided not to drawdown the last bit of the mortgage.

This weeks was awful.

I couldn’t get over the way they ripped down the amazing home built by his parents to build that weird ugly house. The interior was utterly tasteless.

what’s happened to Kevin? He didn’t seem to engage with the house on a design level at all, is it because of her health problems he didn’t want to criticise them?

Kara and Jonny were so cool. I loved their style and was absolutely wowed by them. Very impressive and lovely people. Jonny was so skillful. I hope they are enjoying the house and good things have come to him work wise following the show.
This week was not my favourite. I preferred the bungalow they pulled down.

Totally agree. He came across as very selfish. The part where the scaffolding was coming down the next day, and the ill wife was painting/sealing the roof while he sunbathed in the garden was unbelievable!

I missed the first 15 mins, so didn't see what they ripped down nor understood the childhood trauma narrative, but the house they built was very uninspiring. The roof was ugly, as were the columns holding it up. I liked the idea of the building part enclosing the pond, but then DH pointed out that the pond looked like a sanitary towel from the old adverts where they used blue gel.

And then inside was dull and the colours all wrong. Horrible purple doors, weird shade of blue for the kitchen. Not for me

I agree, Kevin didn't comment at all on the fact the end result was unattractive - and the man said he had to use their pension money to complete it! His wife kept going on about needing to avoid stress (even before her cancer diagnosis) so I felt there was a contradiction right there that Kevin didn't touch on, whereas sometimes in past shows he has pressed on sore spots like that.

Now they are reliant on the house to keep supplying an income because no pension.

I’m watching this week's on 4seven and getting enraged by the bloke. Also the hideously ugly house. Why, just why?

I was furious watching this week's. That mid century modern bungalow should have been listed, it was beautiful. The floor! The decorative walls! Demolished because the man was still tantrumming about his dead father although in his seventies. All they needed to do was smarten it up a bit which would have been much kinder on the environment, their finances and his wife's health. All while preaching about wellness and sustainability.

How his wife didn't leave/kill him I don't know. When she was painting the roof while he was lying on the grass!

I hate watching people build houses far too big for their needs, especially in beautiful wild areas. Enormous atriums that would take a lot of energy to heat never mind the resources to construct. I actually think it's irresponsible to show and glorify such rampant consumerism and environmental destruction. Fucking bits of polyestrene flying everywhere.

Yes, polystyrene of all things while he was holding forth self-importantly about his devotion to sustainability….That house might not have been ‘fashionable’ but the carbon footprint of tearing it down and building anew must have been massive.

And ironically his wife was much sadder about saying goodbye to the old house than he was - they had an enormous plot, why on earth not update the old house and build onto it if they wanted more space? What they ended up with looked like an insurance company’s headquarters on a business park on the outskirts of Swindon, unfortunately.

(And correct me if I’m wrong but did he say they’d gone 200K over budget?!)

(edited as I pressed post too soon)

Did anyone watch tonight's?
I just couldn't get it at all!

Yes they went way over budget so had to use their pension to get the project completed- madness!

I can’t stop thinking about it this morning. I’m amazed they had a professional architect involved.

They will never finish, it will blow all their money and their children will spend their childhood in a static caravan.

Not just me then? It blew my mind - I couldn't see an end point at all!

Those kids will have left home by the time it's finished. They're already too old for the slide and fireman's pole (which were daft ideas in the first place).

The digging out of the floor and intricate building of a wooden frame just to pour tonnes more concrete into was also bizarre.

The tower they visited at the end was lovely. Theirs won't be anything like that - much smaller rooms and much less practical. And views of a vast newbuild estate, a substation and the train line.

And then there's the decision to add an extension... onto a massive building.

And him saying he's given up his job to build it... why not just work full time and get a contractor?

Baffling, all round.

Totally baffling I agree.

I think they were just too proud to accept they had made a mistake so were just going forward with it regardless it was much more expensive & difficult than they had thought at the beginning.

Disagreed with Kevin at the end - I don’t think they will ever finish it.

What an absolute waste of 5+ years of their and their children's lives. By the time they finish it they'll probably struggle to climb the stairs themselves through ageing, never mind the kids sliding down poles and using secret dens!

Ah yes - the secret dens. Kids are little for such a short time, I always think it's daft to design a house around them.

I have a friend who designed her whole kitchen around the need to keep the back door in a certain place so that she could, if necessary, rush outside to the garden if one of the kids needed her. The door would have been much better placed on the wall at right angles to the original (where there was a lintel and door-sized window) so that she could have work space in a U shape.

The amount of time when kids are at the kind of age where they are old enough to be playing outside along but still young enough to need a parent to rush out (and run a distance of less than 10 metres less to get to them) is tiny. So now she has a badly designed, but expensive, kitchen and teenagers who don't come out of their rooms, much less go in the garden!

Last night's episode made me shudder.
Each to their own of course, however all the concrete looked very sinister to me, and the curving corridors seemed so narrow. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Star Wars when Luke and Leia are trapped in the rubbish compressor.

They seemed strangely childish didn’t they? Like they were living out a childish fantasy & reality still hadn’t sunk in even by Kevin’s last interview. I would have felt devastated by then & it seemed obvious they had made a big hugely expensive mistake.

We just watched it. Bloody, I don’t know what to say!

Kevin at the end rubbing salt in the wound showing them that beautiful one in Devon 😂 The secret to that project’s success was that they kept the interior open and simple. The curve of the building makes it complicated enough without adding a maze within it. They didn’t seem committed to their project at all and should have spent more to hurry it along.