Grand Designs is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.
Watch, record or stream it with a Humax set-top box.
Kevin McCloud follows some of Britain’s most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams. Furniture maker Lucinda has had a lifelong love affair with wood. Now that she’s retired from creating beautiful bespoke items for other people, she wants to construct something for herself. Not just tables or chairs, but an entire house made out of wood. It’ll be low-impact, wooden tiled like an armadillo, and set in the woodland just above the old family home where her children grew up. It’s a huge undertaking, so Lucinda recruits help from her son Dan and daughter Rosie.
They spent their childhood with plenty of tools and the freedom to roam the surrounding woodland, without wi-fi or a mobile signal, so Lucinda hopes that she has two creative, capable adult helpers on board. The challenge now is to erect a beautifully crafted, two-storey, highly insulated timber home for a very modest construction budget of £150,000. They need to find innovative ways to transport materials through the woodland without damaging roots or vegetation, and to build a structure without any heavy machinery. It’s a feat which can only be achieved by drawing on a lifetime of woodworking skills, inventiveness and family co-operation. But this family are up against major logistical difficulties and skyrocketing material costs. Can they pull it off?
