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Last Night's Grand Designs.

A quick google will provide many examples where a 'grand design' became a financial albatross. I've now watched this and was left with the same feeling I get from other, always male, self builders, which is - shouldn't you be spending more time with your kids? Some of the people on this programme are intolerable arseholes (I'm thinking particularly of the godawful woman at the Waterloo violin factory), but to give this guy his due, he totally recognised where he'd gone wrong and, very obviously, felt pretty shitty about it.
 
peter bj said:
Agree it is called Grand designs for a reason but that is not my point , I feel a lot of people do not cost the build properly ,they were never going to build this house for the budget
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Hello, tonight on "Modest Constructions" we talk to Lorraine and Andy, who had dreamt for years about building the house of their dreams. They got an architect to draw up some plans and they estimated the build cost at £400k. Over to Andy: "Aye well, as you say it was going to cost £400k. We had some equity in the old house and when Lorraines parents died we had a bit more, so we really looked carefully and realised that we couldn't afford it. So we moved to this 4 bedroom house in the suburbs and I built this summerhouse in the garden. "
Fantastic! So Lorraine, what were your views?
"Well, like Andy I had always dreamt of building the house of my dreams. So when the opportunity came up and we couldn't really afford it, and we didn't really have time, what with both of us working and the kids, it seemed the safest thing was to just buy this. It was all ready to go. Andy still wanted to build something so we designed the summerhouse together. It cost about £4k, with him doing most of the work and his mate from football helping out in exchange for a few beers. It's lovely now. We sit in it in the evenings, especially when we have a barbeque. Andy keeps his woodwork stuff in there, he likes that. He made a lovely coffee table. Next weekend we're going to Whitby. "
That's great, it must be lovely to sit in here watching the sun go down over the bungalow next door. And Andy, are these garden chairs your own design, did you make these?
"No, they came from B&Q."
 
I did not see all the programme but when I read back to the provisional sums included that immediately told me that whoop'y whoop'y....you are just asking to be stuffed, o'h the shark has you by the cobblers.
 
Bloke needed a lesson in sums and sense.
Borrowing money to finance always adds risk
Going in blind to find the rocks were too hard is mad.
There were many points where he could have cut back to save money.
That monstrous ramp for car access was insane. Must have been a better way. All that concrete !
Architect annoyed me when he said all the blocks had to be cut individually due to the curve.
How about setting up a jig idiot ?

We watch all the GDs and I find myself annoyed at how pointless most of them are.
The size is often ridiculous. Who wants to land a plane in every room in the house ?
Although I loved the 'bungalow' in GD house of the year where the 2 artists went up and down on scooters :)
 
Finally got around to watching this.

Ego driven naive gambler right there. Early on in the program I thought ..ah he's actually one of the few people to make money from the music industry the last 15 years...when in reality he's barely got a pot to piss in (but has Gold discs on the wall at least LOL)... Even if they'd finished it, how would they have afforded the upkeep.

Architect talking about his pile depth estimates did make me chuckle...Ummm that would be the Civil Engineers job (where was he?). Maybe architect Googled it

Fool ended up paying 8% interest rate on loans during the cheapest credit era ever

I just hope all his contractors got paid in full. Seeing the half finished glazing makes me wonder. I don't care what happens to him TBH...just don't screw up your contractors finances in the process..
 
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The last episode I viewed was a joke , The house that was put through to the final had innovative unfinished concrete everywhere and shuttering ply un treated , It looked shite but the judge said it was groundbreaking , At lease I painted the inside of my workshop / shed
 
I watched 5 minutes of it the other day, it featured some loaded farmer who'd inherited however much land and a farm with outbuildings, and off he went. It covered about 500sqm habitable, was clad in ceramic tiles at some eye watering price and when they'd finished the place looked like a collection of modern offices. I think this programme's jumped the shark, any dickhead with a spare couple of mill can pay some contractors to build a massive ego-palace. It's the modern day equivalent of the 1980's fashion for a bar in the corner of the lounge.
 
I think today's posters are confusing Grand Designs with Grand Designs House of the Year which is sponsored by the RIBA.
[Awaits blowback]
 
I always scoff at the houses where there is no nod to everyday convenience. I mean living rooms with no huge flat screen tv or actual stereo! WTF!

Needless to say those homes with dedicated cinema rooms/hifi clearly on display get my vote. Also I'm not a naked concrete fan. Ho Hum.
 
"Entitled" rich kid hedge fund managers etc fretting over whether the £80K or the £120K swimming pool would look better whilst no doubt just up the road some poor family are crammed into a mould ridden bedsit and contemplating whether they can turn the heating on or not... Rubbing peoples faces in the egregious wealth inequality in this benighted country... If this wasn't bad enough we've got the likes of "Benefit Britain" stirring it from the other end of the shitty stick... "Oh it's 9 o clock Mildred, put ITV on and lets have a laugh at the poor people in the freak show!"....

Nah I don't watch it...
 
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