Kevin McCloud has re-visited one of the longest gestating projects in Grand Designs history with a second trip to the West Pennine Moors of Bolton to catch up with Paul and Carol and their energy-saving timber fortress.
The couple had embarked on the project in 2015, when the Grand Designs team first visited them as they broke ground on the large plot they’d bought opposite their then current house.
Builder Paul was abandoning his traditional bricks for something more modern in the process.
Moving into their very first non-period home was going to be quite a wrench for them, with Carol commenting at the time: ‘I’m a bit wary about all those clean lines – it’s not me.’
Nevertheless, they cracked on with the project that summer, estimating a cost of around £350,000 (although builder Paul’s outlook was ‘it will cost what it costs’) and a project length time of around 15 months so Paul could enjoy the experience rather than work 15-hour days.
They were only six years or so off target then…
Within the first 10 weeks of the build in 2015, they had spent £100,000 on foundations and come up against the formidable wet and windy Northern English weather.
With funds rapidly decreasing as the weather halted work, Paul commented: ‘I might as well have stood on the edge and poured my wallet in.’
He also confessed that he hadn’t enjoyed ‘one single day’ so far on the project – oh dear!
After 10 months, they were on to wrestling with underfloor heating and plastering and hunting down bargain toilets on eBay as the budget continued to dwindle.
Despite having made progress enough to have a solid structure and a fair amount of the interior at least started, they faced further hardship when their loan application for £200,000 was denied as they waited for someone to make an offer on their old house.
As Carol put it: ‘We’ve spent everything we’ve ever had in the bank.’
With the money running out, work came to a halt, and it’s only now, a whopping six years later, that Kevin and the show returned to see if Paul and Carol had ever managed to finish the build and, most importantly, if it had been worth it in the long run.
Happily, the couple were living in a fully completed, ‘inverted house’ as planned, with five bedrooms on the ground floor and two massive open-plan living spaces with balconies and a kitchen on the first floor.
Their modern twist on a medieval-inspired staircase took centre stage in the building, alongside its vast 30 metre corridor.
Reflecting on the experience, Paul – who had had a heart attack in the intervening years – admitted it had been ‘traumatic looking back’ but overall was a ‘pleasurable experience’.
So much so that he was keen to look at another building project, despite having called this home his swansong.
Carol was pleased to be finished forever, blaming the 15-hour workdays on the house for Paul’s health issues.
The final budget over the seven years came to between £500,000 and £550,000, which Paul labelled ‘money well spent’.
‘So good to see decent, hard-working, down-to-earth people on #granddesigns – bless them, and their lovely home,’ declared one fan on Twitter after the show.
‘Greatly admire this family,’ added another.
Grand Designs continues next Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 4.
