The essential episodes of Grand Designs
Watch these 15 in order and you've got Grand Designs — each pick states its reason.
- 01
Newhaven: The Timber Frame Kit House
Tim Cox and Julia Brock want to build their home on a clifftop in Newhaven.
- 02
Architect Henning Stummel and his partner Alice Dawson plan to convert a dilapidated joinery workshop in north London into a contemporary family home and office. They want to preserve the building's original steel frame, but to restore it they will have to take it down, which means carefully extracting it from the neighbours' walls without causing damage to their property - and that's just the start of the couple's problems. Kevin McCloud follows their progress.
- 03
Boat enthusiast James Strangeways invites Kevin McCloud to survey progress on the construction of his new home, which his architect nephew Ben Hebblethwaite has designed to be as 'un-houselike' as possible. James has spent the past 35 years travelling the canals and waterways of Britain, and despite never liking houses, has decided now is the time to put down roots on dry land. Ben hoped a home standing on stilts above a marsh, and incorporating ship-like qualities such as a keel-shaped roof, will be enough to satisfy his boat-mad uncle. However, Ben's contractor goes into liquidation a few months into the project, taking £87,000 of the £300,000 budget, and when James decides to make a few tweaks to the design, alarm-bells begin to ring for the young architect.
- 04
The Wirral: Floating Timber House
How do you turn your small bungalow from a 1960s dormer into a generous 21st-century piece of slick architecture, all for £175k? Stuart and Rosie Treasurer from the Wirral plan to decapitate their bungalow - cutting the roof off to leave just the walls - then balance a big new floating timber box on top, containing five bedrooms. To keep costs down, they take on the plumbing and electrics themselves, spend as little as they can on insulation, and leave elements of the building unfinished. The hope is to get a stylish industrial look in the process. But the stress levels spiral when their neighbours grumble about the ultra-modern wooden box going up in the middle of their traditional suburb.
- 05
South Hertfordshire: Roman House
Chris and Kayo build an intricate, radical and complicated home on protected land close to one of Britain's most historic abbeys.
- 06
Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire: Mini-castle
Kevin McCloud returns for a new series of the show that follows intrepid individuals trying to design and build their dream home. In Buckinghamshire he meets young Spanish architect Jaime and his wife Mimi as they embark on an epic mission to convert a Grade II* listed folly into a family home. Originally designed to exhibit a fossil collection, but gutted by fire and left in ruins for the last 200 years, the crumbling mini castle beguiles Jaime and Mimi. Giving themselves a wildly optimistic six month deadline to finish before the birth of their second child, it's not long before the couple hit trouble. The Saxon burial ground the folly is built on throws up some macabre surprises. Their stonemasons from Madrid let them down and local builders with no restoration experience have to take on the crumbling stonework. Jaime puts all his energies and creativity into the project, using innovative 3D mapping to squeeze living spaces into the tower, but it's an exhausting struggle.
- 07
Kevin McCloud meets Andy Stakes and Jeanette Hardy, who are building a new house on top of a sheer cliff on the west coast of Scotland. The pair want to spend £250,000 on a two-bedroom, glass-fronted and earth-sheltered home for themselves and their two beloved Newfoundland dogs. However, construction on such an exposed site is fraught with danger and the pair face no end of problems throughout the build, and a last minute design change that begs the biggest question: even if Andy finishes the house, will Jeanette actually like it?
- 08
Energy conservationist Andrew plans to build a radical, self-heating home by storing the warmth of the summer sun into insulated earth banks. But will this gigantic thermal experiment work?
- 09
- 10
Chichester, West Sussex: Floating House
Dan and Nina want to build a unique family home, but their plot is dominated by a pond filled with local drainage. Will their West Sussex house be sublime and sleek or a Shrek-like swamp?
- 11
Kevin McCloud meets Kate and Rob, who have lived in a 1940s prefab house built by Rob's grandfather. Originally designed to be lived in for just 10 years, this factory-built home is well past its sell-by date. Now, Kate and Rob are at last in a position to replace it with a bespoke, modern, warm home - which will also be built in a factory using volumetric modular construction. Over just six weeks, their new house will be manufactured on a production line, complete with insulation, tiling and kitchen installation.
- 12
Kevin McCloud meets Rosa and her partner Craig who are turning a century-old, family-owned, decommissioned steam railway reservoir into a home. Their radical plan to reinvent the reservoir into a unique living space involves punching huge holes through the walls to allow light to flood in, a mezzanine with views across the valley and a concrete extension with four bedrooms. Along the way they encounter a pandemic, numerous money crises, pregnancy and a schedule that grows from 12 months to over three years, is it worth it for Rosa to have the reservoir home she has dreamt of since childhood?
- 13
Kevin McCloud follows the progress of Zahid and Ferzana from Leeds as they set out to transform an obsolete coastguard station in East Yorkshire into a cantilevered, three-storey home made of steel and glass to enhance their panoramic sea views. With a tight budget of £325,000 and a goal of finishing in 10 months, the pair had their son Yusef manage the project but when Yusef gets a career opportunity he can't turn down and Covid hits the couple's business, will they be able to stick to their budget and time frame?
- 14
The iconic property show returns for a new run. Kevin McCloud follows more of Britain's most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams. Howard and Sarah have embarked on a number of ambitious building projects together over the last 30 years, but now they've devised plans for the most radical yet - a sleek, angled, metallic floating home on a tidal estuary near Worthing. Designed to look like a boat, and nestled within an idiosyncratic houseboat community, the structure will sit on an experimental prefabricated polystyrene slab to deal with high tides alternating with hours sitting in the mud. On top of the floating polystyrene will sit a steel frame that will need to be strong enough to resist the stresses of a moving structure, covered in composite insulated steel cladding. Upstairs will be a soaring, open-plan living space with an outer deck and views of the estuary, while below deck there's to be accommodation for them and their teenage children, a home office and a cinema room. It's a huge experiment, with £385k to spend over an 18-month schedule, especially as they'll be doing much of the work themselves and finalising the engineering as they go. Things get off to an agonisingly slow start when it takes months to painstakingly remove a condemned D-Day landing craft from the plot. Designing and making the floating polystyrene slab is a real headscratcher, and they need to buy a crane to get materials over a tall sea defence wall. Add to all that the constant tidal shifts that disrupt any construction and it's a real recipe for disaster... Can they get their grand design over the line?
- 15
Kevin McCloud follows a couple who face a race against time to realise their dream. Two years ago, corporate accountant Pep was diagnosed with terminal cancer. But rather than rest and avoid stress, Pep and partner Malene focused their attention on a long-held ambition to build a new house on their land in the Surrey Hills. The plan is to construct a modern take on a Viking hall, inspired by their love of all things Scandinavian and Malene's Danish heritage. But they must build quickly so Pep can enjoy what time she has left in the finished home.
