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Sad that I missed that. Must be more entertaining than NED vs N.Ireland soccer currently on Dutch TV. Watching the grass grow is more entertaining.
Did anyone catch this weeks grand designs?
A lighthouse project that I’ve just watched on catch up. Unbelievably ambitious feet of design and engineering. This guy had a very outlandish dream of building a house of epic proportions and that dream proved to be so difficult to achieve he pretty much lost everything, £5m sunk in to the site, ran out of cash, left with a shell he can’t finance to finish, needs another £2m to finish it and lost his family over the strain of the debt and project. Pretty much bankrupt.
He did build an second house on site worth c. £2m so has somewhere to live and it’s stunning
But what blind craziness drives a person to over reach in such a significant way?
If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch
Sad that I missed that. Must be more entertaining than NED vs N.Ireland soccer currently on Dutch TV. Watching the grass grow is more entertaining.
I saw it last night, and thought it was pretty harrowing. Girls all grown up and moved out, lost the wife.
Just isnt worth it
A tough tale indeed, but the guy clearly went into it without proper budgeting and controls.
Noticed a few this series have “personal loss” come into it, seems to be a new gag for the show!
Just watched it on 4oD catch up, at one point his wife says about their huge debt.... ‘if I think about it I won’t be able to sleep’
Christ I would have been a gibbering mess at that point.
Such a shame as it could have been stunning when finished.
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Originally Posted by eagletower
I think regardless of how crazy he appears to have been it was indeed harrowing to watch and I couldn’t help but feel for him even though he was the architect of his financial downfall
Tough on all connected to him I would have thought
It pains me that these people can't operate a spread sheet and stick to it. They seem to be oblivious to people like Quantity Surveyors and a 10% contingency fee.
Just from the replies on this thread, I'm wondering how true any of it really is. I mean it is TV, where little matters beyond ratings and viewers.
I think that most of the time it takes a special kind of obsessive passion to do a “Grand Designs” project such that spreadsheets and budgets go out of the window. I’ve posted about mine on this forum (and an update is due) - it’s swallowed ten years of my life so far. During the course of it I’ve started and finished other smaller property “mini projects” which I’ve managed financially far more tightly, but my big project really is a crime of passion!
I rarely watch Grand Designs thesedays, can`t help thinking you've got to be eccentric to have these ideas and pursue them, an example of blind faith in most cases. As I`ve got older I`m more risk averse and I`m certainly not an idealist, so I find it hard to relate to these schemes. Really sad when it all goes pear-shaped, people chase dreams and sometimes it backfires in spectacular fashion.
But, with the figures normally involved with people living their dreams, they surely must have committed some figures even if only to the back of a fag packet !!
Apart from the 'staged yes/no' -question, I cannot get my head around the fact that someone agrees to have the story of his demise aired on TV!
That’s certainly what sensible people would do!
It was a strange one. Clearly the guy was obsessed with his vision and lost all sense of proportion. It was a bit like gamblers who keep chasing the loses in the hope that all will come good.
I've just watched it and, whilst no expert, I did have a fair idea that digging into the bedrock as much as did would have cost an absolute fortune (it cost him about £1.4 million in the end) so I can't help but think his contractors and estimators let him down a wee bit.
Ultimately no excuse other than greed though as he could have stopped and changed his plans at any time.
Even McCloud gets it wrong too, looks like people who bought into his housing scheme are set to lose a bunch of cash:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...-a9076151.html
Last edited by mondie; 10th October 2019 at 22:33.
I haven't seen this episode yet. However, I am a planning consultant in NI, where we have a planning policy that provides a greater opportunity for 'self builds' than any other part of the U.K. and I am always amazed at the level of unrealistic expectation as far as build cost is concerned. The number of times that I've heard "We'll build this for £150k/£200k/whatever" when clearly it will cost closer to twice that amount. Figures like £65-£75/sq ft are currently being thrown around for a one-off self build, when a more realistic figure is around £100/sq ft for a traditional build, medium spec house. I'm not surprised when many people get themselves into deep water, even with a fairly traditional build.
Same prices here, excluding the patch of land. You have to add that as well. Since we're in a small country, the price of an m2 is very, very high. Most recent figures I found are from 2013. Average price in my town is 377 euros/m2. Going to the west ('Holland') is much more expensive: up to 1000 euros/m2. That's not inner-cilty prices. Like all big cities, thoes prices are madness.
There's one more trick. Most councils here have an 'm2 vs m3' rule: you can't buy a large plot of land and put a house the size of a chicken-coop on it. You won't get permission. The other way around isn't allowed as well. You don't get permission to build a detached home that's largely reaching to the edge of the plot. Largely as in: a garage sitting on the edge is allowed, but no the main part of the building being close to, or on the edge of the plot. You have to stay at least 2m (or even 3m) of the edge of your plot. Has to do with privacy and less prone to fire 'crossing the border' to the next house.
Apart from that: current prices over here are way, way over the top. Young people with a fair income(!) aren't able to buy a house anymore. And then there are companies that buy houses for rental purposes; 800 homes on their list aren't special (A cousin of our King, member of the royal family). He rents them out for bizarre prices or as an investment.
There's a connection with the low-interest rates: putting money in the bank has no use. Investing it in brick-and-mortar proves to be more lucrative. It's a bubble that will pop at a certain point.
Menno
Last edited by thieuster; 11th October 2019 at 06:18.
It’s only around 10 miles from me and where the build is there are some very expensive houses, so I could kind of see the financial logic in the beginning of what he thought he would be getting for his money.
The costs however just escalated and it seemed to consume him and his family. Sad outcome and so many years gone.
If you ever drive past and he gets it finished I’d like to hear about it, maybe a pic?
I’m not hopeful it will be him that gets to finish it though sadly
If you mortgage up all that debt then get divorced does his ex take 1/2 of it when she leaves?
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Grand Designs bingo...we always watch these projects and try to pick the inevitable mess. Overspend, pregnancy, divorce, weather, builders walking off, etc.
- - - Updated - - -
I'm guessing...erm...no. 🤔
Watching this last night I couldn’t help but feel that the project was a victim of the client and architects ego’s.
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I bet if he did a crowd funding he would generate quite strong support particularly if they TV did a promo and follow up and ended with marriage being fixed too.....hey worth a wallop...
As someone who works in the industry, I would say that approx 80 - 90% of clients I work with are unrealistic about what they can get for their budget. They are therefore hugely over ambitious with their proposed scheme and have to cut the scheme back afterwards to meet the budget, or find more cash to meet their ambitions.
I think it is in our nature to pursue our dreams when it comes to our own homes and that leads us to have some form of 'financial blindness' as we all think we can get something cheaper than is ultimately realistic. This is not helped by loads of TV shows showing people building mammoth building schemes for tiny budgets (according to the TV...), which is often total BS.
There was a a Grand design a few years ago where someone ran out of money. However Kevin revisited him in another episode a few years later and by appearing on GD a wealthy individual got in touch with him and financed the cost to finish it.
I dread to think how much it's cost the bloked to finance the Devon build, going to a hedge fund for money is crazy. Sounds like every other avenue was exhausted
That article is written in a certain way, if he hadn't been involved it would just be saying that investors will have to wait longer for there money, it doesn't say the company has gone bust, it does say that it is being restructured.
Reading between the lines I think he was a victim of the change in the way music was consumed. Early in the episode it's revealed he was behind the Euphoria compilations and received "significant, ongoing royalties" which is probably what the first mortgage was secured against. But then streaming has taken off massively and royalties from compilation albums will have fallen off a cliff.
Crowdfunded ownership of the lighthouse AND The Eye as a pair of holiday homes might work. Would get very good rentals over the summer.
The site is on the road between Saunton and Croyde, just before the final turn into Croyde village.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...83!4d-4.224413
My family own a holiday home in Croyde, it's actually visible in that map link.
Croyde is expensive, that particular stretch of cliff crazily so.
I don't know where you think the truth has been stretched or warped, but I can confirm at least that the site entrance has been boarded off for about as long as the program said, that progress has been slow and that the house is unfinished.
Interesting. You can look through the different images on Google over the years to see how the site has changed (from the road of course).
Looking a bit sad on the last (most up to date) image.
I watched this and was touched by the impact the build had on the family, much the same as a previous episode where a couple split up trying to build a wheelchair-friendly home for the husband.
I do wonder whether some of the posters here actually watched the programme in question. This chap had a contingency but there were site-specific issues to do with excavating the bedrock that chewed up his entire contingency for the groundwork and some.
Yes, there was some hubris and that was clear from listening to him talk about the project in its initial stages. However, if everyone lacked that desire to push themselves to achieve great things then we’d all live in a dull semi-detached dystopia.
Good luck to him and I hope he can complete the project and release the funds from one or both of the houses on the site and either move in or move on.
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If its a joint mortgage then its joint liability i think.
I watched it last night and as I recall the excavation of the bedrock took 6 months instead of a few weeks and used up his original 10% contingency, £200k I believe. I can’t understand why they didn’t drill and blast instead of using the rock cutter? You can drill and blast with extreme precision these days and it certainly would have clawed back a lot if not all of the overspend and certainly most of the 6 month overrun. I can only think local authority rules must have forbidden its use but nothing was mentioned with regards to blasting as an alternative.
Mind you he still would have run out of funding so it’s a moot point!
Apropos of rock cutting, we made an interesting discovery some years ago when working on my palazzino conversion.
We had two old well shafts which had been filled with rubble which the builders duly cleaned out. They then discovered a connecting tunnel between them which then led to a large (circa 30+ feet x 25 feet) underground cistern cut into the limestone under the house, originally built to store harvested rainwater but we found evidence that it had been used as a WW2 bomb shelter.
Having cut a doorway into this space from the adjacent basement my builders asked me what I planned to do with it. Needless to say I told them that they would be putting my swimming pool there... I think in the end we cut out, handballed out and removed around 75 skipfuls of rock. As it was underground we couldn’t use a diesel compressor to power air driven tools so the whole job was done using medium duty electric drill/breakers. It took a few weeks...
I always thought the programme should be renamed - Grand Egos.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
After a fairly minor kitchen conversion that was a world of pain, even though nothing went wrong, there is no way I would attempt a Grand Design. Unless I was totally minted and a PM was taking care of every last detail.
I despise Grand Designs – it encourages idiots to have a go at stuff they really shouldn't.
I'm fairly certain that the bloke planning to build next door to us has been 'inspired' by the cult of McCloud. Either that or he's totally deranged because the project plans for his new home look like a collection of shipping containers stuck at right angles to each other. We all appealed against it, and he had to reduce some height and lose some area, but it still got approved.
Hopefully we'll be long gone before work actually starts.
It was good to see a touch of realism to be honest and made a difference from the usual minted architect/PM with a ton of industry contacts and a half decent plan.
This guy was ‘in the music industry’ paid over a million quid for a house on a cliff then knocked it down before spunking another million and a half drilling into said cliff. He was up to his eyeballs before he’d even started building! Sad that he ruined his family but it was only ever going one way.
Our family has a house in Braunton just up the road, and we know that site very well. The elderly aunt that bequeathed our house to us used to play golf with the old lady that lived in the orignal house on that plot.
It was never a lighthouse, that reference is solely to the style of design he came up with.
I have paddleboarded around that site a few times, and I have to day I am flabbergasted by the quantity of money spent, for so very little gain.
I should add that I have not yet watched the programme (but I definitely will).
The local geology is relatively soft schisty style of sedimentary rock, so getting through that stuff should have been relatively easy, and from what I have seen going past, he has got very little more than a concrete shell, a steel frame and load of very expensive glass.
The shame is that it is nothing like as good looking as the lovely building on the way out to Baggy Point, the next point north along the coast, which is great to look at.
Dave
The odd ones I watched seem to be all to same crap boring formula, annoying solicitor/accountant from London with pregnant wife wants to build 16 bedroom house out of cow dung in Cornwall/Dorset runs out of money halfway through then finds £450000 down the back of the sofa then spends the last 10 mins of the programme showing Kevin mcclown round it while looking smug
I have noticed that this series has more than its' fair share of dramas.
The one with the chap in the wheelchair was particularly sad; building a wheelchair friendly house, only ending up having to sell and being back to square one.
This weeks seemed to be one mans hubris, to the detriment of his family.
This is on 4 seven now!
The scale of this building spoilt the local landscape whereas the smaller eye looked fantastic. I can’t imagine this unfinished concrete folly standing up to the elements for too long, maybe a Hotel chain could take it over.
Someone just as daft but with deeper pockets will watch the show and take that on. He’s going to have to take what he can get given his debt the effect it’s having on the other property.
A question for the locals - what could that place potentially be worth if it was finished to a high standard?
In the several millions. Property prices around there are very high. James Dyson’s son has just built somewhere for mega bucks.
There’s a lot more to this story. Apparently an Australian professional surfer offered him 6m for the site and he turned it down. Also apparently the reason the funding stopped is because the company that leant it (think f2f, funding circle etc) stopped lending above X amount so put a stop to it. If it was that bad it would have been repossessed by now.
cantilever access road?... ...kin idiot.
If it’s a joint mortgage, then both signatories are liable for 100% of the debt, there is no 50/50 about it, the lender just wants their money back from one or both of the borrowers. Any liability split would have to be agreed between the couple.
We watched this and it was rather sad. Seems to be an example of where ambition clouded all judgement of moderation and reason. Sad also that he didn't skimp on paying for advice (£250K I seem to remember) but yet seemed so ill advised throughout.
I find it hard to get my head around what drives a lot of these people. They always seem to be absolutely loaded, apparently ‘need’ about 10,000 square feet to accommodate a family of 3 - and then spend 3 years building a house, resulting in something that looks magnificent but will cost a fortune to heat, with huge windows and 50 feet ceilings. In the process they age about 10 years, and you can tell they’re bored and thinking about their next project at the end.
On balance, I think I’d stick with the more traditional ‘buy a nice, expensive flashy house that already exists and decorate to your taste’ solution
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That was what struck me , he could have built any house on that site and it would have been amazing , see the smaller house he finished
poor guy felt sorry for him at the end
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