Grand designs

Actually it looks pretty good, where it is may not be the best place, but it is central london, which means IMHO, any semi decent place is

Quite how two non working people got a mortguage for 350K is the most puzeling aspect. I know her mum sorted out much of the cash, but its still a puzzle.

Rick

In message , Rick writes

Quite, um, individual. Now if it had been sat nicely on a hill side with a good view.... I trust that was astroturf in the bedroom! Wacky.

In message , Rick writes

I think anything was going to look a bit odd surrounded by the flats from the cameras eye view, but from 'inside' either garden or the house you'll not notice, and from ground level outside you just had some white walls really.

didn't go for lot of the internal decor etc. but hey it's their house, but I did like it in general,

It was in sarf London. The entrace was in road with what looked like decent large houses with an estate to the back. They blocked out the estate

He was a lawyer. The mortgage was probably before they knew he packed in job in. The extra was easy.

Whatever rocks your boat, but I certainly put a new build smack bang in the middle of an estate. For 350k i'd choose a more appropriate spot and sold the smaller house and land they had to cover the excess money they borrowed.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

All these super modern houses, which I tend to like, featured on this programme have little insulation in them. All that glass will make this place hellish expensive to heat. Same with the House in Belfast a few weeks ago, which was on a large sloping site which is ideal for a falling away earth tube that will help heat and cool the building. The cost of the tub would be buttons. Just the odd touch of inventiveness would make all the difference to many of these houses. They are let down by ignorance. Eco? Most have never heard of the word.

They are just boxes with full glass fronts, so not difficult to build. Keep it square and not curved and very easy to do. Adding superinsulation and earth pipes and the likes can't be that great a cost, and will pay for itself by no full heating system and very low bills.

You obviously don't know London property prices. Richard Cranium used to live in those flats before they moved him to the home.

How wrong you were.

How I was what?

All I can envisage is London borough council knocking the estate down and building modern houses around that building and looking grossly out of place.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

Read my post on the location. The estate was secluded (to them) at the back. The kids could spay graffiti on the walls and they wouldn't even know.

Well yeah, but that's a different argument really isn't it. Presumably they wanted to stay in the area/London or whatever. finding any spots at all to selfbuild in somewhere like London must be pretty difficult.

The couple wanted privacy, yet put a vast glass frontage on the house. Seemed like they were going to live in the "bunker" dug under the house.

GD is a good programme, but I often feel that the self-builders could have bought a better 2nd hand property for less money.

I see the architects cocked up again... Bruce

You are joking of course.

architects, along with ripping off the clients.

MBQ

Wouldn't it be better for the self-builders to take on the architects tasks themselves and pay a professional building project manager. Rather than pay architects fees and do the build management themselves?

Bruce

Yes it would providing you know the in'n'outs of structural weakness and weights, ect,ect.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite