The opening episode of the new series had me feeling superior – until it made me cry
Why would anyone want to do this? That’s the question I find myself asking as Kevin McCloud embarks upon a 26th series of Grand Designs, following enthusiastic self-builders, ready to sacrifice several years and their life’s savings to build something that is all their own.
The first episode introduces us to Sarah, an energetic and intelligent artist – the sort of woman who purposely wears mismatched gloves. She is returning to her roots in the North East after 40 years down South after her children recently left home. She is looking for a challenge, so she has bought a field and is planning to build an arts hub.
Her nest might be empty, but her mother, Joyce, has found hers rather full – Sarah is staying with her until she can move into her as-yet-unbuilt house. “My mum thought I was completely mad,” she says before revealing that she is going to project manage to build herself. I’m inclined to agree.
“I think this is low risk,” Sarah says, instantly casting doubt on her ability to, you know, do this. Then, as though to underscore her previous statement, she adds: “I’m not going to borrow any money.”
Sarah’s arts hub is to be constructed from hempcrete, which is – to massively over generalise – sort of like concrete, but made with hemp. Hempcrete requires a large team of people to cast it on site; fitting, for a building that is to house an artistic community. Sarah’s vision is only somewhat clouded by her builder David saying: “It’ll be the first in this area. And it’ll probably be the last.”
The optimism at the start of the show is waning by the time we get to the second ad break. Sarah plans to move out of her mum’s place and into her new home by November – all she needs are walls and windows, and the windows can go in as soon as the hempcrete has been cast. Except that they can’t, explains David. The windows sit on the stonework so the house must be clad, by hand, first.
“It’s just extraordinary that I hadn’t thought of this and nobody made me aware of it,” laments Sarah, looking to the place where her project manager would have been standing – except that the project manager is her.
Meanwhile, the hempcrete is being made, in a process which I forgot as soon as it was explained. It is going well, until the team discovers that they need double the materials they actually have. “Why did somebody not pick up before that it was more, and out by so much?” cries Sarah, again forgetting that she is that somebody.
The hempcrete crisis is averted, though Sarah still can’t relax. David, the increasingly glum builder, tells us that the stone Sarah has earmarked for cladding her building is going to run out well before the walls are finished. David is nicer about it than I would have been.
The end result is the sort of airy, architecturally arresting house that Kevin McCloud adores, all rough-hewn surfaces and a colour palette rich in taupe and greige. It’s a full two hundred and sixty thousand pounds over budget, but who cares about money when you can say that you’ve built your own walls? “She’s exhausting to live with,” admits Joyce, once her daughter is safely ensconced elsewhere.
The episode had made me feel gently superior, until right at the end, when the rejuvenated Sarah is getting ready to open her arts hub to the public. “We can all make a mark, all of us,” she says, and quite suddenly I found myself in tears.
Grand Designs speaks to something primal in all of us, a need to create shelter and warmth. And it speaks to a higher calling, too, the human desire for beauty, for art. Every time one of Kevin McCloud’s builders chooses, say, hempcrete over bricks, they remind us that it is worth taking time and trouble to do the difficult thing.
There’s still no universe in which I’d attempt something like this myself, but I am very glad that the Sarahs of this world continue to throw caution, savings and sanity to the wind, and in doing so, create something wonderful.
‘Grand Designs’ continues next Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 4
