Grand Designs – Adam and Nicola

I saved Grand Designs to watch with Jason when he got home from scamping.  I have forgiven him for taking part of my double boiler with him on his adventures. It turns out he just thought it was an odd shaped saucepan that I wouldn’t miss. He has all the culinary flair of a door knob, bless him.

I managed without it in the end.  I forget that this house comes with a microwave. We don’t have one of our own and I never, ever use it, so it has become like a glorified shelf.  Turns out to be quite handy when you want to melt chocolate to make brownies and your husband has nicked off with half your double boiler.

Who knew?

Anyway, back to Grand Designs.  It’s always best to watch it with Jason.  We watch it in the way other people use Twitter when programmes are on.  We suck our teeth a lot and say: ‘Naooohhh!’ and ‘Arrghhh’ and ‘They’re not going to do that are they? Oh my God, they are!’

It is very enjoyable indeed.

This evening we watched Adam and Nicola who had bought two engine houses that held the pumps that stopped mines flooding in a 19th Century Cornish mine. Adam grew up in Cornwall, and one of his fondest memories was of his dad taking  him to see an engine house renovation when he was a child, and it had been his dream ever since to own and renovate one to live in.

There were all sorts of problems with the build.  Firstly the site was an ex mine head.  Mines are not brilliant places to build houses.  Engine houses were often situated right at the lip of the mine shaft, so they could be more effective pumping out.  There was a chance that the house could simply fall down the mine shaft, which they estimated went down several hundred feet.

Nice.

Then there was the fact that it was grade two listed, because Cornwall is rather proud of its industrial heritage. This meant that although Adam could change the interior of the building, the exterior of the building had to look as close to the original building as possible.

Firstly the planners, quite wisely in my opinion, insisted that they locate the actual mine shaft and cap it off.  There was only one 100 odd year old drawing to go on, which was not entirely helpful.

And, as they got in an earth mover to shift six metres of dirt to find this mine shaft entrance, they also had to have an archaeologist on site to make sure they weren’t digging up anything valuable, and/or disturbing the rest of the site.

After digging six metres down, they found absolutely nothing.  At this point I would have been questioning the drawing they were working from which basically looked like something Tallulah had knocked up, and which said old pit head, with a big X to mark the spot.

I probably would have tried poking around the rest of the site just in case I’d got the location of the shaft wrong.

They decided against this, and just filled the six metre deep pit with £12,000 worth of concrete, in the hope that it would stop their future home sliding into a huge crack in the earth.

Hey ho.

I can’t say I was reassured. Kevin wasn’t entirely satisfied either judging by the vibrations emitting from his hair.

The main problem, as ever, was cost.  They had £200,000 to renovate both engine houses.  One was to live in, the other would be a holiday let that would give them an income.  They could not access the second £100,000 until they had successfully completed the first house and used it as security on the second £100,000.

£100,000 to build a house inside four crumbling walls ten metres high is a daunting prospect.

I’d have given up and gone home.

But no. Adam persevered.

Luckily Adam is a stone mason and general whizz kid when it comes to building. He also has experience of working on listed buildings and restoration projects.  It was a good job, because he needed every bit of luck he could muster.

He was also owed favours by the world and his wife, all of whom turned up to do this job and that job for him in exchange for things he had done for them.

He gave himself a year off work to build the house and even Kevin was impressed by his sheer commitment.  He worked like a slave on it, and what he achieved was near on miraculous.

Sadly it was not miraculous enough, and after a year, the money had run out, the house was not even half finished, and Adam had to go back to work.

At the end of the programme Kevin visited for the final time.  It was September of this year, and they had been working on the house since 2008.  They were still living in a caravan in the grounds.  Adam reckoned it was almost there, and another year would see them in.

I believed him.  Kevin did too.  There was none of that eyebrows shooting up into his poll that he does when he thinks they’re deluding themselves.

Adam and Nicola were another Ed and Rowena type couple.  They spent only as much as they could afford.  They worked hard.  They didn’t get impatient.  They had a clear goal and steadily worked towards it, knowing that they would get where they wanted to be eventually.  I absolutely admired that about them.

But it was the first house of this series that I did not like.  Inside, the rooms were too small. There was one room on each floor, with a double height picture window and mezzanine on the top floor.  On the ground floor they had made the most of the fact that the planners had allowed them to build two lean to’s to add to the original structure.  The space just would not have worked at all without it.

The main issue was the stair case.  The building being listed meant that nothing about the exterior of the building could be added.  They had wanted to build an external stair case, but were not allowed.

The stair case being inside the main body of the building meant that the room spaces became even more like corridors, and the fact that health and safety regulations required them to box the staircase in, as it was their only means of escape should a fire break out, meant that the hulk of the staircase was just monolithic on some floors.

I loved the outside of the building.  The stonework was amazing. I love industrial buildings, and would much rather live in one than a conventional house.  I say this not having ever tried it, but I tell myself I would.

In this case though, the stair case and mine shaft thing just didn’t float my boat.

Still, there’s always next week.

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