Thread: Grand Designs

Rod,

To answer your question all the usual planning permissions and site inspections are done in the UK similarly to the way they are done here.

There is sometimes a fine line between refurb and rebuild and what does and doesn't require permission, my guess would be there is plenty done inside houses that does not have permission.

HH.

Originally Posted by HappyHammer

Makes me want to go and buy a block and speak to an architect.....

Many of the houses make me wonder why I gave up architecture, but then many of the owners make me remember!

Cheers,

P

Originally Posted by les88

After reading the forums reports on the show I watched last night. They mustn't have building inspectors like here, welding 3 feet of steel onto a short curved length, I wouldn't accept that. Cutting the 'footing' to suit the wrong windows. And talk about over capitalization, a house costing that in a slum wat is it position,position.position. I was hoping it would be like "This Old House" on pay TV. But I will watch it again.

les

Yeah that wasnt the best episode that's for sure...

Originally Posted by rod1949

We do! I'm right here

Ok let me put it another way...

It's a shame we cant say..Hey I want a total obscure looking what ever and find someone to create it, build it or just stumble over it in a shop.

A friend of mine wanted a reno and the wood floor done in the traditional way (over stumps etc) to fit with rest of the house and because they just like the way they sound and feel when you walk on them...That may sound strange to some but that's the way they wanted it. They couldnt find one builder in Perth to do it. All of them wanted to pour a concrete slab and do the lick on stick on style floor boards. In my opinion that's an act of crime on a federation house.

I'm in the market for a reno so if any of you know of any builder/draftman in Perthl that has an inch of creativity, appreciates other building techniques apart from the slap em up display home style, please let me know.

<O

It's a top show and I like the honest appraisals given by the presenter.

On Austar they also have him doing Grand Designs Indoors and Grand Designs Abroad, there was a great one in Spain I think it was where a pommie couple built a great looking shell and roof and then along came the wife and added about 5 different periods of finishes and furnishings and it looked shyte and the presenter said so too.

HH.

tonights episode was "belfast". Fantastic house built by nice people on time and on budget - the architect and his wife.

Gives me hope that they dont just choose the seriously incompetent all the time - anyway i want the Belfast house, though the $750k for the building part might be a bit beyond me - need one of those free blocks of land in the middle of nowhere

We do have 'Owner Builder magazine' not the same standards sure but people designing (sometimes or trying to )their own thing. Hopefully in the next couple of years ours will be in there to.

Did you catch last night's episode?...conversion of an old brick barn. What a cack. They seem to always (almost always) choose people that decide to cut costs by project managing the build themselves.

Despite the end result being fantastic the build was plagued with incompetency - mostly from the project manager. The first issue with the head height in the second storey which required them to dig out the ground inside the barn only to find that there was no foundation to the building (ye gads!)...a serious amount of money to underpin was required. Then when they fixed the foundation they poured too much concrete and the same issue of head height remained. By not employing a professional project manager (ie the architect) they actually costs themselves a lot of money.

In the end it cost 420,000 pound - that's about 1 Million kanga-roubles (Aussie dollars to you and me)...and that is just for the house!

It really is an iteresting show - beats those commercial network home shows hands down.

I cant understand why the architect didn't do a site measure before starting any drawings. When Kevin was on site explaining that the floor wasn't level it seems simple enough to see. The owner / project manager seemed to asked the architect for the most basic of services and then had the nerve to then continually request further advice for free.

I laughed when she got the price from the first builder at about 400K pound ...... she thought he was a twat and could get it done for 250K pound so she fired him. After all the problems that she went through, compromising the quality of the project, it ended up coming smack bang on the original estimate, if not over.

Originally Posted by Sir Stinkalot

I cant understand why the architect didn't do a site measure before starting any drawings. When Kevin was on site explaining that the floor wasn't level it seems simple enough to see. The owner / project manager seemed to asked the architect for the most basic of services and then had the nerve to then continually request further advice for free.

I could not for the life of me figure that one out...you would have thought that the architect would have done the most basic measurements - like slope of the land! I think this was due to the fact that the woman in question was cutting costs...tch tch...ended up costing her a lot more than the price of an architect.

What I also could not fathom is that they started the project before understanding the current state of the building site ie. there were no foundations!

I laughed when she got the price from the first builder at about 400K pound ...... she thought he was a twat and could get it done for 250K pound so she fired him. After all the problems that she went through, compromising the quality of the project, it ended up coming smack bang on the original estimate, if not over.

Just goes to show you does it not that builders are not always out to rip you off.

Despite her incompetency the place looked fantastic...but that was mostly down to the builder and architect. And she was pretty rude in pointing the finger at the architect when he had provided the services that she contracted him for - I hope he charged her double for all the extras.

I watch the show and shake my head. As far as I can see, most of the places they build are just plain ugly. That is to say nothing about being inappropriate for the climate, wasteful of energy and materials and often highly "unlivable". They left some words out of the title, "GRAND waste on stupid DESIGNS". Yeah, there is room for good design in architecture and in some cases they have some good ideas, but it is all lost in these monstrosities.

Originally Posted by burraboy

I watch the show and shake my head.

Like this?

I tend to watch it intermittently... love the show!! Bloody brilliant

In the most recent one with the couple with a couple of boys that had been aid workers and had the block in sunny Scotland on a heck of a slope facing Loch Lomen (sp?) great spot!!... shame about the house... I mean who wants to live in a square block?... dumb... but apparently the architect did a great job with the save the environment side of things and it was passive whatever to keep it warm and cosy.

The bloke reckoned having 2 project managers would work... yep thats right that will work... having one project manager to do the ground floor concrete walls then another to do the timber kit build upstairs THEN to have the first builder being reliant on the second builder to finish his work on time so he can come back and finish his work was bloody amazing... and an incredibly unreasonable time schedule GIVEN that most of the materials were being IMPORTED from Canada Sweden etc... funny they were goin on about how tight things were and yet they flew to Canada to the forest then the mill to watch the ceder being downed and milled into they shingles must be cheep to do that?

I have looked around a fair bit for something "different" or "unique" for us to build here and now weve exhausted our options we are considering a visit to an archetect... Im usually an optimistic sorta bloke but I dont see going this way (grand designs) staying within budget... unless we win lotto were gonna end up back at square one again with the kit homes and then the project builders... sadly its a fact that if you dont go the project home route and dont go the kit home route you are very rapidly priced out of the market totally... simply because your in West Aussie... thats not whingin or whining its a fact.

But love that show... and same here with the news thing but thats no worries in my book