Did anyone watch Grand Designs last night?

Ah, I bet it wasn't as good as the one where we got to laugh at Damien Hirst for spending tens of thousands of pounds on A SHED. That was the best one ever. Better than the two goths with the water tank. (There have been two water pumping station couples.)

Maybe it's schadenfreunde (sp?) but I prefer the ones where everything goes wrong and the smug couples who you want to punch in the face at the beginning of the programme are left debt-ridden and on the verge of divorce at the end.

and then they go and put 3 large goldfish in a small spherical bowl. grrr.

that said, the bricks they used for the extra wall did look like a better match for the rest of the wall than the ones that were specified. other bits of the courtyard used the other bricks but that wall was already pink. they just needed a couple of months to get a bit grubbier and less new looking.

andy

and would you find 6 english builders as efficient as those germans?

andy

That house was rather nice though.

Couldn't stand the place with the £34K cooker though. The whole building was like a very impersonal, immaculately finished, public space - with glass walkways and indoor courtyards. It felt like a Terence Conran restaurant or a posh hotel to me. If I worked in the city, that would be the last place on earth I'd want to come home to.

cunts!

'revised repeat', means they don't have to mark it as a repeat in the listings. didn't watch it last night but a part of me hopes it has fallen down since the last visit.

the finnish timber kit house looked fun. like lego only bigger. (and only £65k for the entire kit)

> terribley energy inefficient.

rich people, i have decided, don't care. if they can afford the bills it's ok for them to use as much as they like, they feel. for all of us who bother to recycle there's someone like my boss who drives a hummer.

The other insufferable couple were the ones (well, come to think of it, they were all insufferable) who decided to build a New England clapboard (or whatever) house in Sussex and the bloke built his own fireplce and it looked like a bloody great Babapapa in the corner.

The only ones who weren't entirely insufferable were that Pet Shop Boys bloke and his boyfriend and they were only bearable because they were subjected to homophobia (or so they thought, sadly we didn't get to see any of it).

I would like just a little wooden house.

The folks who renovated the 19th C. house in Leith were nice.

I also remember a guy who made a house out of straw in France? He was a nice down to earth chap, and his house ended up looking grebt.

AND a dumb waiter - not only that but a HEATED dumb waiter!!!

Next week, a foolish man builds his house upon the sands.

I missed the ones with nice people, I was in a state of seethe.

And then they conned her out of £300000.

Very poor.

Did anyone else see that "How To Rescue A House" on BBC2 earlier in the evening? THat was even sadder? It was supposed to be about buying and restoring derelict listed properties. And in the end, the couple missed out on the house they fell in love with because it was sold to a developer who was going to use the land to build TEN NEW HOUSES and not bother with restoring the listed house.

Did Kevin look supercilliously at them, and point this out?

they also seemed to have dumbed the program down a lot. in the first series they'd've explaned how the laser guided plumbline thing worked. see also: scrapheap challenge.

(TBF, I might just have seen one shit episode that put me off for a bit).

I definitely hit that wall, covid era has meant things get at least that interesting again

Def true that the actual designs and builds became less and less interesting or the central focus years ago which made it a far worse show imo

A few of the recent ones definitely had more interesting, challenging builds with very good stuff in them (and quite likeable people) tbf

i think at this point i prefer the Australian and New Zealand ones, they seem more varied. or the various George Clark budget versions.

(also My Floating Home)

5 minutes into yesterday's and the guy seems like a cock

No double entendre but he grew on me

yeah.

nice enough house but fuck a pointless cantilever.

tinie tempah doing a good job on Extraordinary Extensions despite the odd premise - he seems to know his stuff and is affable. quite fetching pink titles too.

Rotten pick for house of the year

watched this last night and, yeah, the winner seemed to be really nothing special.

liked the one in the scottish highlands, or would've if they'd've just left it as the one long part and not added the two other wings.
(wasn't that featured on the short lived show about prefabs that ch4 did, with the presenter who died before the series was finished?)

is this the same one? tamar
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/impossible-builds/on-demand/64660-001

vs assynt:
https://www.architecture.com/awards-and-competitions-landing-page/awards/riba-house-of-the-year/2021/house-in-assynt

It was on at least one other show but im going to haev to check re the specifics

new series tonight.

(australian series on thursday as well, a contiuation of the fashion of more4 showing aus versions of all the english favourites: big brother, bake off, married at first sight, lego challenge...)

watching this now. 5 minutes in: "it'll be a nightmare if it costs that much"...

30 minutes in and the Latvian constructors have taken the money and run.

and the entire thing done for 2 people, one of whom works away for months at a time.

australian show was better last week - quadraplegic making a single-level earth house.

but the uk one this week more up my street - modular

Thought postman Kevin was Russ Abbott at the start there

i have annoyed my other half by yelling "you're gonna get live-ins" at every shot of a shed on a truck

Kevin enthuses about a bronze light switch that you can toggle with your elbow. but it sticks out about an inch and it's going to catch on everything for years to come.

Love it when Kevin McCloud is like "great architecture can change the world, it can light up our hearts, a home can show us how to love & how to live" at the start of Grand Designs & then the episode is about the cruelest & most delusional man you've ever seen in your entire life

— Mike Townsend (@townsendyesmate) January 6, 2024

Amazing Spaces on Thursday... mk3 train carriage, gwr livery at the bottom of a field. £3k to buy, 10k to transport

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amazing+spaces+george+clarke+train+carriage&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridgeindependent.co.uk%2F_media%2Fimg%2FG6C2RDG4CNE8DXNV3MK1.jpg (image Search link to avoid paywall)

the previous week was something similar with containers and that always appeals. maybe i just like narrow buildings.

narrow buildings always have problems locating the stairs though. do you halve the useful width with a staircase or stick it at the end?

this reminds me that there is a new season of grand designs on...something. britbox. or acorn. one of them.

filming on project started 5.5 years ago, i wonder how this is going to go...

the final trip to another water tower seemed like twisting the knife

they'll never finish it.

when it opened with the lift tower I thought whoa! the water tower was a bit of a let down after that.

the latest episode has the most unpleasant and unnecessary intro imaginable.

i liked the boat, but My Floating Home got there first.

your post has reminded me I've not watched the second one yet

it's odd that GD and Amazing Spaces restarted in the same week. you'd think they'd spread them out.

unpleasant and unnecessary? kevin mccloud?

i have seen it now. yikes.

i like the new afters show that goes into more detail. and the prefab build was nice and smooth, to the point of being uninteresting.

new presenter on GD Australia not as good though.