Building The Dream vs Grand Designs

[AliG]

Just watched episode 2 of the new Series of Building The Dream.

 

Does anyone else feel it has overtaken Grand Designs now? BTD is interesting because it generally focuses on normal houses that people might build and I feel you get some interesting ideas from it. Grand Designs on the other hand seems to increasingly focus on deliberately unusual builds with little relevance to most people.

[thomas]

I'd be slightly disappointed if Grand Designs was not a 'grand design'

I liked 100k house on the bbc, it acually had some new ideas in it.

Edited January 17, 2017 by thomas

[Crofter]

I don't make a point of watching GD anymore... seems like people with more money than sense. Hard to empathise when they run into problems.

 

I've got absolutely nothing against innovation and quirky design- just would like to see people working with more modest budgets as well. 

[NSS]

Trouble with tonight's episode was that it should have been titled 'Having the dream built for you'. £420k build cost for a 120m2 house (excluding land) is obscene!

[AliG]

I couldn't figure that one out at all. I think I did notice at least 2 Gaggenau ovens in the kitchen which are about £3000 each and don't seem to do anything a £1000 oven doesn't do, but I did't really notice any other extravagances. I need to have another look at the finished house.

 

I have a main contractor and an architect and am not skimping on the spec. I think all in I will be around £1500 a square metre, not £3500!

 

GD doesn't necessarily have expensive builds, more just odd nowadays. Like that one with the guy making a house boat. Although there was Clinton's house which was Grand. You wouldn't believe how many people seem to have seen that episode and asked me about it because I am building a house.

[NSS]

If those ovens are £3k each then the £20k that she said the kitchen cost must have excluded the appliances! Got the distinct feeling they were just on an ego trip.

[Triple07]

Much prefer building the dream, especially when it's a true self-build, I do get disappointed when it's all main contractor, and, as evil as it sounds.. I do like when there is the "normal" drama of missed deadlines, financial woes, exhaustion and tension.....or at least I hope that's normal and not just us! We have found many of the episodes have offered some tips for a general self builder too, and sound advice...bye bye bi-fold doors ?...

Grand designs has its place though, especially the ££££ projects, although most weeks I do find myself rolling my eyes at Kevin McClouds intro ?

[RichS]

9 hours ago, thomas said:

I'd be slightly disappointed if Grand Designs was not a 'grand design'

I liked 100k house on the bbc, it acually had some new ideas in it.

 

I'm with you on the 100k house programme. Far more relevant to mos of us.

[ToughButterCup]

Thing is, we  get something out of all of them ; even if it's negative. The program may have one particular focus, but you take what you can get from every resource - not always what the program maker intended.

 

@Construction Channel's videos have taught me huge amounts of stuff. I look at those I think are relevant to me. But  almost always I have learned  other things by accident: how to stack wood : how to shift 20 tonnes of hardcore with a small digger : how impossible it would be for me to construct a roof : how tight a level line needs to be : whether to hire or buy a material handler : how to get a pretty young woman to mix your cement for you.

 

Ian

[AliG]

I definitely need to watch last night's again to try and see where the budget went. Maybe the main contractor was just taking them for fools.

 

Especially when the budget didn't allow for foundations!

 

They did say £15000 for windows, which is pricey for a 120sq metre house, but not outrageous.

 

It was an oddly drama free episode. If you aren't short of cash then it i hard to have drama. Things just cost more and you pony up the cash.

 

People asked me if I would like to be on one of these shows. I felt it wasn't good for business to be showing off your large expensive house on TV. But also I knew they wouldn't be interested as there is nothing unusual about the house and I wouldn't run out of money. Indeed I am sure I told the architect to keep it straight forward.

 

I was surprised at the valuation at the end but £5-600 a square foot is apparently not an unusual price in Elstree having just looked it up.

 

I just looked back at the list of houses on the last season of GD and it was less unusual than I thought. There was that odd tree house at the start. The last episode where the people built a wooden box on top of their bungalow also reminded me what a country of small minded NIMBY whingers this is with the endless complaints that it was ugly and didn't fit in. Perhaps if you were building next to some kind of listed building but usually the complaints come from the owners of standard suburban houses. I always find their arguments nonsense as if you took it to its logical conclusion we'd all have to be living in huts if houses always looked the same as the ones already there.

Edited January 18, 2017 by AliG

[Declan52]

Building the dream usually covers more of the actual build and goes more into details ESP the heating of the homes. Grand designs is more focused on whatever the wow feature of the house is and gives hardly any details unless it's about who is pregnant/broke/hasn't a clue/sick/stressed out or to much money.

[Bitpipe]

I watch Grand Designs as pure entertainment not documentary and the recent dream home series with Piers whatshisface was about as substantial, potentially more so as at least he's an architect and could talk to the detail.

 

That said, I watched and old GD this week, the 2008 passive house with the arched self supporting tiled roof - still one of my favourites and the factual content was reasonably accurate, even if KMC discussed a MVHR unit as it it was some kind of futuristic technology.

 

That's also one of the few that had genuine unscripted drama when there's an almighty crash off camera as a poor builder puts his foot through the arch...

 

[jack]

1 hour ago, recoveringacademic said:

But almost always I have learned other things by accident: how to remove part of one of your remaining digits; how to roll a roller.

 

Fixed that for you! 

[jack]

45 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

That said, I watched and old GD this week, the 2008 passive house with the arched self supporting tiled roof - still one of my favourites and the factual content was reasonably accurate, even if KMC discussed a MVHR unit as it it was some kind of futuristic technology.

 

I didn't love the way the house looked from the outside, but the interior of that arch was awe-inspiring.  I did briefly look into whether we could do something interesting inside our house like this but it was just too impractical (for which read expensive).

 

I went to a talk by the architect/owner of that house two or three years ago.  What I found really interesting is that he only decided to go for Passivhaus certification very late - certainly after construction was well under way, if not after it was finished.  Fascinating guy.

[Nickfromwales]

10 hours ago, NSS said:

If those ovens are £3k each then the £20k that she said the kitchen cost must have excluded the appliances! Got the distinct feeling they were just on an ego trip.

I've just done a modest Wren kitchen. 

£10,400 for materials and £5k installation costs ( everything except final coat of paint ). 

£20k? They're having a LAUGH

 

[Jeremy Harris]

First off, these programmes are all entertainment, and most are made on a very,very tight production budget.  They are almost as cheap to produce as quiz shows, I suspect (although quiz shows take some beating for being budget TV).  It's no accident that there are so many of these shows around, now, they've proved popular and are very cheap to produce - a winning formula for anyone commissioning a programme for a TV channel.

 

They are also, like many quiz shows,  very much "ego TV", in that generally they don't pay the people whose projects are really the stars of the shows, any money at all, they rely on some people "wanting to be on TV", and not caring about getting paid for it.  FWIW, you don't get paid much for TV work anyway, unless you're a big name.  I think I was paid something like £400 per episode for Scrapheap, which worked out to less than £10 an hour, and the same went for all the production crew, who were mainly self-employed and charging pretty modest rates.

 

They have all developed, or aimed at, target audiences, and those target audience aren't self-builders at all.  There aren't anywhere near enough self-builders in the UK to get a commissioning producer interested in buying any show aimed at them, so the audience for all of these shows has to be massively wider than that for them to be commissioned. 

 

GD has focussed on mega-projects in the main, with a few oddball ones thrown in, and the appeal of the show is also partly driven by the presenter (although my other half can't stand him!).  Their target audience is similar to those who buy some of the up-market home magazines - mainly "lookers, not do'ers".  It's notable that quite a few architects use GD as a way to gain free publicity for their work, as there seems to be a higher than average proportion of architects and designers on that show, plus it seems closely tied to RIBA.

 

Building the Dream is plain "aspirational entertainment", the sort of show that thousands will watch in daytime re-runs for years to come, and which appeals because it seems as if the projects are, in the main, within the reach of many ordinary people.  It has a target audience that's probably pretty close to being the same as that for the programmes on doing up houses, etc, and it's a bit like some of the "chat" magazines, in that respect.

 

Amazing Spaces is really about how small a space you can do something with, and a fair few people can probably relate to it, as it is about making use of small spaces efficiently, and a large number of UK homes are pretty small.  It's also got the "wacky factor", in that it features some stuff that's pretty weird and wonderful, and there is a fairly large target audience for anything out of the ordinary.

 

I'm friends with a former ITV and BBC Commissioning Producer (I worked for him on a BBC project that was part of H2G2 many years ago), and he reckons that the viewing target market has to be in the several millions of views (that's total views, both original broadcast plus multiple repeats) before anyone will commission a new series.  Self-builders amount to a few thousand a year, I suspect, so nowhere near a big enough market for any TV show, hence the reason that these shows are aimed to entertain millions of people who will never contemplate a self-build for real.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2017 by JSHarris
typos

[AliG]

They've almost certainly excluded the appliances, I think I saw two side opening Gaggenau ovens and 2 Siemens top of the range microwaves. Thats £8k give or take right there. There was also a very large induction hob.

 

My kitchen designer tells me that they have never sold more Gaggenau, Sub Zero, Wolf etc than in the last year. Originally she specced a Gaggenau fridge and freezer which were over £10,000. I nixed that. Sub Zeros are £12-16k. I don't think they offer any real advantage over other fridges.

 

I don't mind spending extra to get something that works way better or looks much better. I will be having a Miele washer and dryer in the new place, they are demonstrably quieter than other makes and on average much more reliable. However, generally speaking I turn on the oven to 180-200C and that's it. The cheapest Pyrolitic Siemens oven is £759. Now not cleaning your oven, that is something useful. Also after 10 years it is likely that the kitchen equipment will look tatty and I might want to replace it, I don't fancy £800 a year in oven depreciation.

 

In saying all this, it's just a decision for each of us. I drive an expensive car, they are my weakness. Some people like Caribbean holidays. Whatever makes you happy. I still can't figure out a £400K build cost based on a few extravagances.

[AliG]

You're right Jeremy.

 

What I really like about these shows, unlike most "reality TV", is they don't set out to make fools of the participants.

 

In the main people get to achieve their dreams and the shows celebrate that. Very unusual in these cynical times. Some episode of GD have made me cry, especially the ex solider who had lost a leg building a house adapted for himself. It was inspirational.

 

Then there is the entertainment value of the somewhat more out there people -

 

The Georgian House woman in series 1

 

The guy who built the house with the inverse wing roof.

 

Clinton and his impressively OCD attention to detail.

 

Then there is just the towering achievement of some people -

 

The pumping station where the guy worked for weeks blasting the walls clean.

 

The there are just some very nice houses -

 

The Irish guy who built the house on the side of a hill is a personal favourite, I loved that house.

 

I'm still a fan, maybe BTD is more useful/relevant, but GD is still very entertaining.

 

I was rewatching the arch house the other day too.

[daiking]

As Jeremy notes, GD has become more and more of an architect's circle jerk over the years. Proven by that annoying house of the year prog. RIBA'd for their extra pleasure, not yours.

 

On the Gaggs, I know a chap with Gagg appliances, he runs a high end bespoke kitchen company. It's his customers paying for them. 

[PeterW]

The best GD of all time for me is Ben Law's woodland house ....

 

Beautiful house, ridiculous budget and proof you can build something if you put your mind to it ..!

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

33 minutes ago, PeterW said:

The best GD of all time for me is Ben Law's woodland house ....

 

Beautiful house, ridiculous budget and proof you can build something if you put your mind to it ..!

 

 

Me too, but that was really before GD became what it is today.  I somehow doubt that they'd look at a build like that now - what on earth would RIBA think if they did!

 

Then there's the "being parsimonious with the truth" thing, that particular afflicts GD, but does affect all of these shows (except, perhaps, Amazing Spaces and also, perhaps, Restoration Man).  The one that stands out for me is the GD "eco" house, that had a SAP rating of G (!) and yet had the owner and Kevin McCloud spouting forth nonsense about energy efficiency and insulation.  Remember the infamous Multifoil comment from him, that a 20mm thick bit of this "magic stuff" was equivalent to around 150mm (or thereabouts) of ordinary insulation?

 

I generally like Building the Dream, except that I have a very strong feeling that some of the costs quoted are, like the kitchen example quoted above, more than a little fiddled.  One theme of this programme has been that it starts out showing how building a house yourself can save tens of thousands.  I'm sure it can for some, who get land at a good price and do a lot of work themselves, but I think you need to work hard to make a self-build come in at much under its market value.

 

Our build is a reasonable example.  I saved at least £50k to £60k by my efforts.  These savings came from having no architect, no planning consultant, no project manager, only a couple of trades people and doing a LOT of DIY.  Even so, our build came in at around £1340/m², which was more than I wanted to pay.  Had I just used an architect, project manager, and had the house built for us by all the various trades, with no DIY from me, then the cost would have been somewhere around £2000/m².  Had I been able to build the frame, foundations etc, and do more of the basic building work, the cost would probably have been down around £1000/m².  Market value (including land cost) is currently is around £2500/m² around here, but this is an expensive bit of the local area.  Where our old house is, market value is around £2000/m² generally, depending very much on the exact location and size of plot.

 

I wonder how many self-builders really save a load of money by self building?  Only those who get a cheap/free plot, or who do a heck of a lot of work themselves, I suspect.

Edited January 18, 2017 by JSHarris
typos

[ToughButterCup]

4 hours ago, JSHarris said:

  I saved at least £50k to £60k by my efforts. 

 

Better revise my target down a bit then.

 

[Declan52]

It's hard to guage how much you can save especially when you watch building the dream. He usually comes out with you could save £100k but during the build they end up blowing the savings on better fabric of the house and then whatever fancy bit they want in their pad and if anything is left it goes on the kitchen and bathrooms. But they end up with a higher standard of a house compared to a bog standard turnkey builders finish plus there house is exactly how they wanted it.

If you where to just build a normal house that just passed building regs and put the cheapest materials into it ESP kitchens,bathrooms, flooring,tiles and doors then you could easily save a lot of money.

Me I reckon I saved maybe £65k. Got the site for free, site next door when for £35k the week I started mine, and saved approx £30k doing all the work I done. But it took me two years working seven days a week with only the frost stopping any work,loved them few days off, so I was basically slave labour. 

[ProDave]

7 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Our build is a reasonable example.  I saved at least £50k to £60k by my efforts.  These savings came from having no architect, no planning consultant, no project manager, only a couple of trades people and doing a LOT of DIY.  Even so, our build came in at around £1340/m², which was more than I wanted to pay.  Had I just used an architect, project manager, and had the house built for us by all the various trades, with no DIY from me, then the cost would have been somewhere around £2000/m².  Had I been able to build the frame, foundations etc, and do more of the basic building work, the cost would probably have been down around £1000/m².  Market value (including land cost) is currently is around £2500/m² around here, but this is an expensive bit of the local area.  Where our old house is, market value is around £2000/m² generally, depending very much on the exact location and size of plot.

 

I wonder how many self-builders really save a load of money by self building?  Only those who get a cheap/free plot, or who do a heck of a lot of work themselves, I suspect.

this is very true of our situation. We are downsizing from a 5 bedroom to 3 bedroom house. The new house will no doubt be worth less than the old larger house. But the lack of a buyer for our old house might mean eventually we have to lower the price to sell it. Then we get dangerously close to the situation where the old house sells for less than it has cost us to build the new one. A point I WILL NOT cross.  I maintain that in the present market up here, a self builder would be doing very well indeed if they could just sell their newly built house for what it has cost them to build it. 
 

[jack]

13 hours ago, ProDave said:

Then we get dangerously close to the situation where the old house sells for less than it has cost us to build the new one. A point I WILL NOT cross.   

 

This has been a pretty consistent approach from you.  Is it a point of principle, or are there financial implications as well?