Did anyone watch Grand Designs last night?

The dancefloor is cool, but 25 grand. Ouch.

fuckin cuuuuunts

Kind of skirted over the "how are you getting on with your neighbours now" issue.

Skirted around. Scooted over?

new series tonight, 21:00 on 4

(have been watching old favourite This Old House on quest for the last couple of weeks. how GD used to be)

how is this any different from grand designs?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/building-the-dream/episode-guide

"Architectural designer Charlie Luxton helps people build dream homes that are both amazing and affordable"

maybe it's Grand Designs for people who don't have a cool two mil two spend, i.e. they only have a cool 500k.

the converted cinema in GD this week was <450k

but, yeah, is more4 so suggests it's a budget version

Fuckwits

^ post every week at this time tbf

am watching this now and am curious when in the programme the above was posted. was it at first use of the phrase 'eco taxi'?

or "14 neighbours' fences"? or "lap pool"?

it's all a bit of a blur

specifically, alex james i spose, had i to pick

ha.

next week's looks promising - "the kitchen is the mothership of the home", "rhythmic spaces"...

i think the cheapo more4 version may actually turn out better.

Yeah it seemed much more promising.

GD has become a programme about schadenfreude, o'erweening pride and planning struggles. Last night was ten mins of house forty mins of difficulties ten mins of whinging about difficulties (usually, obv, self inflicted)

Just tell us about the plan, show us the build, pick out the details, show us the house! Dont dwell on the fact that ignoring yr architect or running yr own project or triumphantly taking on neighbours, planners or the bank is idiocy- we know!

Just, yknow. The house. Show it.

Building The Dream (just watched) is a second class Grand Designs. i wonder how the people feel when ch4 turn them down for GD and then suggest they do BtD. and it's not like they do a lot of GD - half a dozen a year or so, some of which are 'revise repeats'. i guess it's kevin's availability. that said, he's fannying around building sheds...

has a lot of the same problems though. 400k and not 1M, yes, but there's still something about it. marketing manager, tax advisor, parent's garden, village they grew up in, 'party house', the aga, the wire basket full of corks etc. presenter keeps asking 'will they listen to my advice?' not quite to sarah beaney levels but still. also, the false jeopardy - will they make it in for the random deadline that they picked out the air?

(and the massive, sad, irony being that given both his parents died in the last two years the house he grew up in, next door, is now empty)

i want to know why they are building it that way, and how, the details, the insulation, the moisture barriers etc. This Old House does this well. GD used to.

Would watch four hour program (or even whole channel) entitled 'aimlessly poking about other folks houses' tbh

there was 'britain's best home' or something, on ch4 in, er, 2003 which was pretty much this. every other one had a le corbusier lounger.

I think I might have seen this on ILM originally but this posh, architect oriented estate agent's website is a nice Sunday rabbit hole.

http://www.themodernhouse.net/

^ should have kept my parents' Ercol furniture . . .

and then there's this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bjq4d

The House That £100k Built

"With house prices out of the reach of many people and banks refusing to lend, buying a home in the UK is becoming an impossible dream. So a few brave but ordinary souls are trailblazing what could be the solution for all of us - trying to build their own house from scratch."

"Will he be able to finish the house and pay his parents back?" DUN-DUN-DUH

^ starts Wed on bbc2 at 20:00, just before Grand Designs...

yeh m8 the solution for all of us, let's see how far that £150 in my bank account gets me.

yeah idgi, house prices out of the reach of many so the solution for all of us is... to drop a hundred grand??

I mean fine make a programme about people who want to build a house from scratch, but conflating it with austerity etc seems fucking tenuous.

100k isnt cheap for a house?

Och I suppose so aye. I'm just skint and bitter. Carry on.

You can get a flat in a shithole in Glasgow for 30k.

ok, two things wrong with the 100k programme. why build something enormous immediately? there has to be a modular way of doing this*, no need to jump to a 4 bedroom place from nothing. and you don't need to finish it to 5-star restaurant standards immediately either.

(* and if not, why not?)

also, the land was *another* 100k.

presenter is a bit odd. looks like bill gates. and fuck showing these people innovative houses for inspiration, he's not in the position to take such risks. maybe next time.

100k is cheap for a house, to me. but then i live in zone2 where a 1 bed flat goes for 280k. the problem is that getting a mortgage for a self-build might be difficult so you might need the whole of that 100k immediately. or borrow it off your pensioner parents...

oh, the 100k bloke didn't do too badly in the end. apart from that metal wall. i hope there weren't electrics in there...

100k home: my two least favourite building materials, together at last. but otherwise i quite liked it.

(but again, the money didn't include the cost of the land)

not grand designs. not the low-budget grand-designs, not even the bbc2 rip-off of grand designs but George Clarke's Amazing Spaces, specifically the beehive house thing. i've been banging on about affordable modular houses for ages, buy new rooms as you need / can afford them. and that seemed to be close... but, i don't think hexagons are the best shape for the modules - honeycombs are that way as that uses the least wall for the most cells, but that's not what you want for buildings, too many walls.

they also seemed a bit flimsy - single floor, more suited as a summer house than a permanent house.

(maybe insulated shipping containers...)

Yeah, I wasn't at all sold on the insulation properties of the beehive house. The idea makes sense, but I do suspect that squares / rectangles would work better, and that you don't want a flimsy plastic skylight letting all your heat straight out of the roof.

the living pod int he french garage on Amazing Spaces was nice and compact. i could see that catching on in a million tiny london studio flats.

on building the dream last week he said 'the shiny silver stuff keeps the warmth in'. really?

Hard to get excited about someone with ocd building a warehouse, etc.

Cave is a bit o_O

yeah the warehouse/gallery was ehhhh ..... off

I liked the cave!

he did a good job with the cave. but didn't seem to be quite living in it when kevin came around.

New series.

Loved the outside of the black house from yesterday, not so keen on the inside.

My Floating Home on Thursdays at 21:00 on more 4 is fascinating BTW. It is what it sounds like, and a lot of it is Dutch etc, places where they've been doing this for ages.

Wouldn't want that guy as my accountant after that. I wonder whether he'll lose clients now that's aired?

check

check

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hate em already

lmao 6 months? what's their budget?

two hundred grand odd lolololol

posh rich ppl failures are funny til u realise we pay for it

lmao an archaeologist (£400-500 per day) has to investigate every bucket of earth they excavate ?!

this is already extremely funny

oh its the blackest comedy

princess cant distance herself enough from the dreamer architect genius she married

theres only two types of ppl in the world (obv) those that tell you the type of person they are and those that arent awful

His only help on site is Mimi's dad, a retired vicar.

one kid, another on the way and they build something with only two bedrooms?

place would've made a nice 1-bed flat, but it's not a family home.

use of lidar scans was original and useful though.

its an airbnb already, depend upon it

you'd have been better off watching DIY SOS, it was a real tear-jerker.