Grand Designs - What's it worth?

Missed a couple of minutes of tonight's Gloucester lawyers prog. So I went to the GD website and was astonished to see even the supplier of "Tolietries (small bathroom)" (sic) credited. This suggests that the people who appear can scrounge all sorts of stuff 'for the publicity'.

No big surprise but it set me wondering. Assuming that they get some sort of appearance/co-operation fee from GD - how much can you make, all in, by being filmed?

Reply to
Rod
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I doubt they get any fee from GD. They might get a discount on some of the fixtures and fittings in exchange for a mention on C4's website.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Dunno, but when my sis and bro' in law contacted Property Ladder, there was no fee from the programme makers involved; though they did promise a bottle and a copy of the programme on tape. I suspect that with the proliferation of this sort of programme most suppliers wouldn't do anything too special. If I had the chance of working on a building while being filmed, I wouldn't offer any special deals because if you get on camera at all, it's for two or three seconds, they usually say something like "and the bill for the electrics is twice as high as expected" and even if your logo is emblazoned across all available area of your shirt, it's rarely seen for long enough or clear enough to make an impact.

Mentions on the website are ok, but I can't see it's going to make much of an advertising impact unless you are perhaps a national supplier of some hard-to-get niche product, in which case you can charge what you like anyway because people are willing to pay.

Note adapted subject line: have you any idea how many "Grand Designs" threads Google has archived over the years?

Hwyl!

M.

Reply to
Martin Angove

Martin Angove wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@tridwr.demon.co.uk:

Yes - I know but although I mentioned it, I really wasn't commenting just on tonight's edition.

It is also amazing how many times the featured people just manage to do something extra at the end of filming - something that they had earlier deemed too expensive. Examples include doing the landscaping or getting new furniture.

Reply to
Rod

Follow on question... what the hell have they re-mortgaged it for? All that hidden I.T. work and lighting etc etc couldn't have come cheap. Considering they were stuffing chillis into bottles to earn a few quid and doing very little (evident) work themselves !

Reply to
GymRatZ

Well the restoration budget started at £65,000, then went to £120,000 then finished up about £300,000 ...Must have damn good jobs I say and they also cashed in their pensions to help out . Stuart

Shift THELEVER to reply.

Reply to
Stuart

I got a feeling da-da or mummsy where around somewhere with deep deep=20 pockets

--=20 Paul Mc Cann

Reply to
Paul Mc Cann

I kept seeing what looked like a jar of "ashes" in the fireplace and wondered if it was a late grand-parent that contributed substantially to the costs upon their departure.

Reply to
GymRatZ

My thoughts exactly. It would surely have saved a five figure sum easily to have put in the cabling, but left off buying the kit for a year or two? Having said that, I suppose they probably thought "in for a penny..." because if they are already mortgaged (or whatever) beyond the hilt, a couple more quid on the repayments isn't going to make much difference, but getting the money together for the kit later on might be difficult with such a large existing commitment.

Hwyl!

M.

Reply to
Martin Angove

Just realised that the obvious exceptions to this were both Grand Designs programmes: the one about the Huff Haus which spent the whole programme talking about these fantastic Germans and their brilliant system (but Huff have a huge waiting list, so they hardly need to offer incentives for extra publicity), and the one about that girl with the funny name (Melody?) and her bloke who built an "experimental" half oak-framed house. Not so many mentions, but not difficult to work out that said girl's daddy runs Border Oak who designed and built the house and so there would have been *loads* of freebies available, not only for family reasons, but also because of the mentions in the programme and the articles in the magazines (it was definitely in Homebuilding and Renovating, and I *think* I saw it in Self Build & Design too).

On the other side of the argument, I saw a DIY SOS last night; it was at completely the other end of the scale; "here are Bill and Ben" (or whatever their names were). "They are hand crafting this lovely oak kitchen..." but not a mention of the supplier's name. Probably on the website, though I haven't checked.

Hwyl!

M.

Reply to
Martin Angove

Did they have to fill in a questionaire, which I imagine goes something like this:

1) Are you an arrogant pair of freaks, who can agree on nothing? 2) Do you commit to ignoring all advice when given by a professional? 3) Do you consider your own 'research' (asking two of your freakish friends and glancing in one estate agents window) to be far superior to say 15 years experience in the building trade? 4) Are you colour blind? 5) Will you commit to buying a second property wihtout a survey half way through renovating your first, despite it being a royal **** up on which you will make no money? 6) Are you 'living the dream'? 7) Will you put your property on the market based on your own (ludicrously high) estimates rather than listening to the guest estate agents, who will over value the place anyway because they want lots of commision?

Answered yes to all questions? We'll be in touch.

Answer no to any and it's bad luck I'm afraid, you're far to likely to actually do something sensible which makes for terrifically dull television.

Although answer our bonus question with a 'yes' and you can go on Grand Designs:

Bonus Question: When you have exhausted all forms of savings, investments, credit and indeed all fiscal avenues open to you 3/4 of the way through your build are you able to 'dig a little deeper' or 'look really hard' and magiaclly find another =A350,000?

Of course despite this I still watch the flippin programs...

--=20 Steve F

Reply to
Fitz

They had there company name on the back of there overalls and on their van in the last shot.

Trevor Smith

Reply to
Trevor Smith

Also, it adds nothing to the value of a house. Indeed complex home automation often subtracts value because it scares buyers off, sadly.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Agreed, but they had "fallen in love with the space and would live here forever". Umtil they split up, that is. He would then have to take his boys toys to a rented garret.

Bruce

Reply to
bruce_phipps

No - there was something really speciall about those chillies in oil.

But let's not worry about where the money came from. The important lesson is that one should not destroy historic fabric, one should never use Portland cement and that lime and oak are the best building materials.

Reply to
Biff

Not very much I suspect, especially if one is competent because the TV programme makers ony appear to want to feature tossers who couldn't plan a pea soup in a saucepan.

My own building project(s) are going well and have done since the start. For the foreign one we have learned the language, communicate with neighbours and have taken care to get all the permissions, chat to the mayor's office and to involve local builders rahter than importing foreigners and create bad feeling.

OTOH if any TV producer want to make a film about the hilarious disasters that can happen to a British building project at the other end of the EU, I'll happily stop speaking Italian, and brief a few of my chums to act outraged about Gli Inglese whenver there's a camera around.

About £20K would do it.

Reply to
Steve Firth

Check out the website and see a credit for the PR company who blagged the home cinema system - although the word they used was 'sourced'.

Reply to
Rolyata

Although the guy did explain it, I can't believe there wasn't a simpler way of doing all that cabling with some sort of multiplexing. I think the new Airbus A380 has a lower cable density than thay house.

Reply to
Mike

However the value possibly lies not in the advertising on GD itself, which as you say is negligible, but in the press release you send to your local papers "Local tradesman featured on telly programme", etc.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

That made me and my wife scream. One of the most stupid fitments I have ever seen in a house. £1,000s of rapidly outdated kit with bloody nmiles of pointless copper cable for something that could have been done wireless or gigabit ethernet. It was hideaous, old fashioned, stupid (who wants a plasma screen in a niche in the wall that will only fit that particular plasma screen?) and will get ripped out in a couple of year time at the most.

Reply to
Steve Firth

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