Here are some of the biggest mistakes people make on Grand Designs, according to host Kevin McCloud:
The Channel 4 show returns to the small screen on Wednesday for a special episode to mark its 25th anniversary and a brand new series. A show that still resonates with viewers as much as it did when it first began, with viewers at home invested in every project.
Over the years, people on the programme have faced many obstacles when building their homes and there have been some very memorable Grand Designs journeys.
We see McCloud getting involved in projects and trying to give some much-needed advice on camera as people build their dream homes, with some of the presenter’s interventions also falling on the editing floor.
“I do a lot of it on camera,” he told Yahoo in a previous interview in December. “But some of it doesn’t work at all because I’m not seen to be involved. I’m very involved off camera… Or I tell people that what they’re doing is really not good enough and they need to talk to another firm or they need to refer them to a spreadsheet or a supplier or they need help because people need it.”
So what are the biggest mistakes people make at Grand Designs?
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Don’t do this
McCloud has previously joked that people shouldn’t embark on big projects to build their ideal home, hinting at some of the disasters that have befallen ambitious people on the Channel 4 show. When asked what their biggest mistake was, he previously joked: “The biggest negative advice I could give anyone is don’t do it.”
Seriously, disasters are happening right before McCloud’s eyes in Grand Designs – shocking to the people watching from the comfort of their own homes. The most notable example is the lighthouse, which has been called the “saddest” Grand Designs in the entire 25-year series.
It was a magnificent vision but when Edward Short refused to give up his dream of building a lighthouse on the dramatic cliff top of the North Devon coastline he lost his marriage and faced financial difficulties. After all this heartbreak and 11 years it was completed and is on the market waiting to find a buyer but is always attracting interest.
“A few celebrities and I think a comedian or two have worked there because it’s a pretty expensive house and so people have to come in big, including actors, artists and singers,” McCloud told House Beautiful magazine in May.
“The last time I met with Ed, he was close to a deal, so that’s all I know. It’s a magnificent story. It’s a story of hubris and excess and actually the destruction of things, of personal life, turned into a story of sort of redemption and growth, so it was an incredible thing. People were calling it the last Grand Designs, like that’s it, like we’re going to go from a low point.”
The presenter said hope always motivates people – even when faced with the greatest challenges. “You can’t show people the future, you can only warn them,” he previously told Yahoo. “Even in the worst of situations, Edward Short, who borrowed millions to finish the lighthouse in Devon that he was still trying to sell – even in his worst moment, he was still full of hope and it’s the most amazing thing to discover the energy that people have… Oh my God, they’re superhuman.”
Very large houses
It’s no big secret to Grand Designs fans that McCloud warns people not to get too ambitious and build houses that are too big. “I often tell people, you could have built this house two-thirds the size and you wouldn’t notice it, and if it shrank overnight to two-thirds the size, you wouldn’t even notice it,” he previously told Yahoo.
The presenter has good reason for this. He explains: “I think it’s a terrible waste of resources, time, money, everything. I think it’s just something we all do, trying to do too much. We buy too much food. We over-plan. We over-want, we over-reach, I think that’s a challenge. But if we didn’t do that, we’d all be living in holes underground.”
The TV presenter called it his “biggest fear” in a new interview. He also recently told The Radio Times: “His biggest fear is that things are too big. Most homes can shrink by a third overnight and their occupants never notice.”
There are too many toilets
Another problem for McCloud when it comes to Grand Design developments is a house that has more toilets than there are people living in it. He told The Radio Times: “Number two? Houses that have more toilets than there are physical occupants. Why do people judge the status of a house by the number of toilets you can offer your guests? That’s ridiculous.”