Grand Designs

I think we can all agree there are moments in life when you realise the way you feel about things has changed.  Never has this been truer than during the year we’ve just had.  The thought of running around London attending various meetings, squeezing on Tubes and touching everything, then staying out all evening shedding cash on food and drink with pals sounds quite frankly like a dream come true.  A year ago, I would much rather have been ensconced in my flat, dressed in slacks and watching trash on the big telly.  But after twelve months of that, I feel like a social butterfly ready to obliterate my chrysalis and say yes to doing anything, as long as it is outside of my flat.  I’ve even got myself vaccinated (childhood asthma on my GP records saw me texted early and taking the jab when offered seemed like the most straightforward path – if you don’t agree, I am happy to arrange to spit in your mouth in order to share immunity… pretty sure that’s how it works) and, in fact, leaving the house for that was a great day out.

In other changes, I never thought I would feel I wanted to watch Grand Designs.  Any programming about property was a huge turn off, mostly because I spent eleven years saving in order to own one of my, er, own.  During that time, I was at the mercy of the rentals market, from the highs of making new lifelong besties out of flatmates, to the lows of being asked to leave after six months by a woman who once took herself to A&E due to constipation.  The prospect of privileged boomers spending untold cash on their own gratification held no appeal.  But then, I finally got my own flat, and then it became my prison.  Sure, it’s filled very tastefully with an interior scheme that is half John Lewis, half too many houseplants and sure, it’s in zone two among all the things (that are shut), but, as the upstairs neighbours stamp and shriek literally while I type this (and who can blame them as they are stuck in too), I’ve been wondering about finding my way to more space, to something further away from other (stamping and shrieking) people.  And this led me to Grand Designs.  Maybe the time has come for some inspiration about my next house.

Let me just confess that, unlike most of shows these endless posts cover, I haven’t actually seen all of Grand Designs.  There’s nothing to stop me watching all 210 episodes, but all my rambling here is based on three full episodes from the latest series and then an array of snatched snippets when I’ve happened to catch a few moments of the programme over the last 21 years.  But I do know the format, and it’s exactly that which makes it a show you don’t really want to dip in and out of: it’s all set up, tease and big reveal.

First, we meet our grand designers.  They are wealthy.  Not to look at though, and often half the fun is wondering how Jerome and Valentina earned hundreds of thousands of pounds trading rare fur gilets in semirural Hertfordshire.  Either way, they’ve decided to abandon the rat race (or to move into a caravan when one of them is pregnant) and design and build their own house.  And they want us, the viewer, to watch them do it.  It’s the insta humble brag, but make it self-unaware.  Casting judgment on our behalf is Kevin McCloud.  His job is to be a man that knows about buildings and his opinions on them.  Jerome and Valentina tell him about their dreams and he tilts and manoeuvres his head to demonstrate that he is listening, giving the impression he can only process certain sounds if his ears are at certain corresponding angles.  Yet this doesn’t diminish his undeniable charm.  Even when he proceeds to be rude.  He tells them their dreams sound unrealistic.  Then he asks them how much.  It’s a great moment if your pastime is watching people with old money squirm, or people with new money froth at the chance to flash their cash.

Then we get an 3D CGI illustration of the plans.  This is the bit I always want more of.  We never find out more about the exact reasons behind each room.  We focus on one thing instead: it’s all about the light, the heating, the carbon neutrality.  Everything else is rushed past: and then here’s where all the bedrooms and bathrooms are but they haven’t got any floors or windows and there’s no time to explain.  And with that, off we go.  Handy dates on screen remind us that the show takes years to film and we settle into the portion about how they did the foundations.  This shouldn’t be interesting, but we’re all willing things to go wrong and they inevitably do.  Often, to save money, Jerome will pour his own concrete, despite wearing his helmet backwards, and it’s enjoyable to watch the workmen roll their eyes at him, his entitlement and his inexperience.  There’ll be drama that you can’t actually see: if the foundations crack then everything will be ruined and it will cost fifty grand.

The family waiting to move in are shivering in the drizzle under a tarpaulin round the back, but Jerome is standing proud not giving a fig while his vision becomes a reality.  Valentina waits until she can pick out the curtains.  We check in over the months, with Kevin sometimes popping along to tell them off for removing period features (if they are renovating an old building) or expressing disbelief that a heating system powered by Jerome and Valentina’s own sense of smugness will ever function properly (it bloody will).  You’ll marvel at Kevin’s outerwear – his whole house must be filled with sensible jackets.  Lots more stuff can go wrong and the schadenfreude is deeply satisfying.  The latest series has the added tension of us counting down until lockdown hits them, knowing what’s in store while they naively plan their progress.

Suddenly, though, we swing the windows into place (careful!) and everything is finished.  The rainy shell is gone.  We are looking at the actual home.  It’s behind schedule, but we go from pointing and laughing at the grand designers’ misfortune to seething envy that they get to live somewhere so cool.  I would observe that we see the “finished” item too soon after completion.  I want to see it two years later when the French windows are covered in the children’s greasy fingerprints and someone’s chipped the plasterwork with the vacuum cleaner.  Kevin marvels at the ingenuity, rinsing the thesaurus to find just the right words to sum up the achievement, before a final stab in the shape of asking how much it all cost then after all that.  Through clenched teeth, we’re told about the casual one hundred grand over budget that was spent, wondering where on earth this money came from (and what it went on).  How do you secure a loan from a bank when it’s to fund Valentina’s underground crystal craft cave?  Was it worth it that Jerome hand-tickled a million metro tiles to create an impractical kitchen?

You’re left feeling inspired, though.  If money were no object, which bits would you take to fashion your own dream abode?  Kevin admits they’ve triumphed and we kick ourselves that we don’t and never will earn enough.  I normally like to think about what else they could have spent the money on.  Being Brits of a certain age, most of them should probably have prioritised some orthodontics.  But what if they had scaled back the ambition just a touch?  What if a few hundred pounds were freed up?  What if Jerome, instead of gratifying himself with gold-plated bathtubs, got the silver-plated ones instead and funded a family’s broadband bill so they could alleviate disruption to disadvantaged children’s educations?  After all this, that’s the other thing we might be starting to feel differently about.