Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 13, Episode 3 - The Giant Farm Shed, York - full transcript
A young couple wanted to change a 1960s bungalow into their dream house near York, Yorkshire, but once they move into the bungalow they find it will be cheaper to start a new build. So they...
How do you define modern
family life?
Well, I'd argue
it's down to three things.
A chaotic, relentless diary,
plastic play furniture everywhere
and a general anxiety about
where the children are
and what they're doing right now
to each other.
And if you were to design the ideal
setting for such a family life,
the perfect home,
what form would it take?
What single idea
would underscore it?
I'd suggest it's the mothership.
SHEEP BLEAT IN DISTANCE
What's that?
Three years ago,
Martin and Kae Walker bought
this 1960s bungalow in Yorkshire,
complete with outdoor swimming pool.
With some big ambitions for
transforming it into a model home
for their growing family.
But they fell out of love with it
when they realised their plan
wasn't going to work.
The cost to get this house to a level
where we'd like it to be
is probably going to be...
Same as building from scratch.
The cost of building
a house from scratch.
It's so cold, we can't heat it. It
costs a fortune and it's never warm.
It's damp.
All the windows need replacing.
For architect Martin and art
director Kae, the best thing about
the bungalow was the edge of village
two acre plot it came with.
They decided to split the sites,
put the bungalow on the market
and build a brave, new world
for themselves
right on site, next door
from scratch.
We are going to try
and put a whole lot of our own design
and living aspirations
into the house.
We have the opportunity to create
something truly unique to us.
But the "us" with Martin
and Kae is a complicated mix.
They are different people
with different ideas.
While Kae wants their new house
to be cosy and relaxed,
Martin's natural state
is anything but.
He is a wired individual,
a commercial architect whose gods
are precision and rationality.
I have got a massive drive inside me
to be uber-functional.
And it's an opportunity for me to
design the perfect functional house.
You're an architect,
designing your own house,
but I don't want to lose
track of what's important.
Getting our children to have
a happy life in this house
is important for us.
It's not just about
you and I designing something.
It's for our children, too.
Kae's fierce determination to stand
up to Martin is not without reason.
He has form.
He rebuilt the previous home,
an old forge in Kent, and spent
all their money on the structure,
leaving nothing for furnishings.
Theirs might be called
a healthy tension,
a yin and yang relationship.
But they have agreed on a design,
and they're not hanging around.
They've already got
the scaffolding up.
How would you describe
what it is you're doing?
The idea is
it's kind of a mothership.
The kitchen is
the heart of the home.
It's right in the centre
of the house.
Everything kind of
flows off there.
You've got family
living on the one side
and grown-ups living on the other
side and the same again upstairs.
How would you describe the design?
It's going to be open plan internally
with no load-bearing walls,
so I was keen for the timber frame.
I've got choices between concrete,
steel and timber,
timber was the most sustainable
and the cheapest.
As a commercial architect,
Martin's reputation is for high-end
factories and offices,
big, heavy duty buildings, and his
family home will be no exception.
The skeleton will be
a series of repeated bays
made up of 100 pieces
of very thick timber.
Glue laminated beams
to keep the ground floor as
open and flexible as possible.
Into the timber skeleton go
thickly insulated timber panels.
Kae, meanwhile, plans to customise
the interior with different colours,
to mark out the laundry room,
toilet, playroom and the living room
which all radiate
from the large kitchen
at the centre of the house.
This is Mothership HQ.
Kae's command centre,
where she can socialise, work, cook
and simultaneously perform
as a 21st-century supermum.
When she can't see the children,
she'll be able to hear them
through two voids in the first floor
which effectively form a wide bridge
that will connect
four generously sized bedrooms.
The floor above will hold a playroom
and a store for the mechanical heat
recovery and ventilation unit,
that'll make this a healthy
and cost-effective house to live in.
A big inspiration for Martin
and Kae were the local barns.
Like them, this place will be
clad in block work at the bottom
and some timber boarding above.
The ridged roof will be broken
with a central, flat access deck
to present a staggered skyline
to the surrounding houses.
Martin's design takes everything
he's good at and interested in
and attempts to reinvent it
for the house.
Of course, he's worked
on bigger projects than this,
he's just never had to pick up
the tab for any of them.
So, what do you hope to spend?
400. 400.
If we can do it for 400
it'll be really good.
The money to build this comes
from what, selling the bungalow?
Selling the bungalow. We sold
the bungalow... We have the cash.
And is there a mortgage on that,
you've still got to pay or you
can be mortgage free? A tiny one.
A small mortgage on that
which we can't transfer.
It's a mortgage worth £100,000.
It's not vast, but I'd be
cautious about getting any
amount of money from a bank
in a recession.
Having sold the house,
where are you going to live
for the duration of the project?
Back in the house.
Back in the house. How come?
Because we're going to rent it
off the buyers.
You've sold it and renting it
back. When have you got to be out?
I think June but... June.
Are you confident you are going to
get what you want out of him?
Oh, erm...
We've been there. No, we have...
The design part was tricky,
we fought a lot.
It was aesthetics really,
about how things looked.
Sometimes Martin's architect head
doesn't always function family life.
That could kick up a few...
What do you mean by that?
Like staircases without banisters
or polished concrete floors.
You just go, "You do realise
you've got children
"that are just going to
fall down the stairs!"
That's perhaps because he's
a commercial architect and designing
homes for people isn't part of his
usual architectural repertoire.
Ordinarily, if you wanted to employ
an architect to design you a house,
I'd say find one who has
designed plenty of them
for other people, who's really
specialist in that subject
and who has a natural affinity
with domestic architecture.
Martin, I think,
is a great architect.
His speciality, however,
is warehouses.
This type of repetitive but precise
architecture really appeals to me.
It's got that kind of construction,
almost toy-like quality.
It's the model.
It's almost back to the model.
I was fascinated by models,
I loved taking things apart.
Kae couldn't be more different.
She couldn't care less about
how things fit together.
Her job as interior designer on this
project starts when Martin's
finished the structure, when
she will take over the budget.
We'd have to move that wall
purely for the aesthetical reasons.
Her priority is to make
an enjoyable,
delightful home for their family.
She's built a virtual
walk-through of it.
I very much want the interior spaces
to be fun, colourful, happy.
3D modelling gives you
so many more options.
But sometimes with this house
it's become a bit of an evil thing
because it becomes too easy to go,
"What if we just, what if we just?"
And one day you have to make
a choice and you have to build it.
Years of collaborative virtual
modelling and planning mean that
Martin and Kae are confident they'll
have their house up in seven months.
In mid-December work
starts on their frame,
and it's a very strange
thing indeed.
It's made up of glue laminated
timber, or Glulam, with steelwork,
materials as opposite
as Martin and Kae themselves.
It's rare to see timber and steel
hybrid frames like this
on a domestic project.
We have got a lot of steel in here.
That is to get that stability
and rigidity,
so we don't have something that's
going to topple around.
We are creating a simple
portal frame,
so we need that
rigidity at the connections.
For Martin, it's a very precise and
tried and tested way of building.
He's not one to take risks,
unlike Kae, who's taken
and unconventional, eccentric
approach to sourcing contractors.
Most of the tradesmen
and women
that we're using on the build
come from the school playground.
A lot has been done through
us mums chatting.
I got our main contractor, Jim.
He is the husband of a very good
friend of mine.
I'm still on the lookout
for a decent joiner.
I think it's just so fantastic to
use the people we see every day.
This is different from your
run-of-the-mill extensions
and small newbuilds and that kind
of thing. It's not standard stuff.
It's the biggest job
we've taken on.
In the New Year, one month
into their seven-month programme,
the hybrid Glulam
and steel frame arrives.
For engineer Martin, it's a
giant £70,000 Meccano set
and he can't wait to play
with it in his back garden.
He's beside himself!
I've been up since, I don't know,
five o'clock,
twitching at the curtains,
waiting for it to arrive.
Terribly excited, really excited.
I can't believe we've started.
Yeah, thrilled.
It's the day we've been waiting for.
This is an exercise
in engineering systems.
In rational construction,
repetition and efficiency.
In creating an outstanding
vision of symmetrical beauty,
it helps to have
symmetrical workers.
OK. We're identical twins.
A lot of the time on site we get
asked, "Do you two know each other?"
You could say that, yeah.
Or the other one is,
somebody will come over
and speak to Martin
thinking that it's me.
"I thought I told you to do that
an hour ago,"
and not realise it was me
that they'd told. We get all that.
The number of times I've got him
in trouble not wearing my hardhat!
In the hands of a less
particular architect
and less skilled workers,
the jointing of flexible timber and
rigid steel could seem clumsy.
But Martin's mind
ticks like a machine.
Every junction is planned,
every measurement perfect.
Today was a pivotal day
for the build.
The day when it arrives
on the back of a lorry
was my climax of the build for me.
I can see the rhythm of the frame
coming up,
I can see its symmetry,
the finish looks great.
I love the exposed fittings and...
Yeah, it's what I'd hoped
and more, really.
Of course he loves it.
Like the very best of his
commercial buildings,
this place is conceptually
and structurally simple
and elegantly rational.
But it needs to be more than that.
How shall I put this, Martin is
a bit of an obsessive enthusiast,
he's a detail man.
He likes things to be absolutely
clear, he likes his layouts
to be straightforward and simple,
functional.
He likes things to be lined up.
Look, I'm the same.
I do like all my slot headed screws
to be organised in the same way.
I do like detail.
And you need this in a building,
you need your handles not to
fall off, you need a layout which is
really clear and easy to understand,
elegant and straightforward.
However, architecture
also needs soul,
it needs passion.
So I think, erm... cue Kae.
One month has passed since Martin
and Kae started, and the house
has already adopted a straight,
no-nonsense Yorkshire character.
But as well as being a Yorkshireman,
Martin's an experienced
and successful architect,
with plenty of commercial building
experience.
Which is perhaps why, in the raw,
this naked frame looks like
it's going to be a car showroom.
It's quite big, isn't it? It's not
delicate, it's quite "umph".
It's chunky.
Chunky and solid and assertive.
To be honest, I think the really
interesting thing about the frame
at the moment,
there's a huge difference
between what we can see now, to what
you can see when it's completed.
Yeah. At the moment, you have that
solidity and strength to it,
and it looks very chunky.
That will completely transform
once we've got this wall section.
It will be expressed in places...
It will be expressed in places,
but you're not going to see
the full depth of it. No, no.
In truth, what you will see are the
outlines of the Glulam goalposts
repeated through the building.
Done in steel, this repetition would
have felt too powerful and clinical.
In timber, the result should be
quite the opposite.
There's a tremendous pleasure to be
derived from rationality, from
the simplicity, where every detail
is thought about and considered.
And I think that causes calmness,
and that's something that
I feel home should be. Yes.
I mean, the outside world
where we live is just mental
and hectic
and you're doing 300 things.
But when you come home, you just
want a sense of...
TAKES DEEP BREATH
You know. Do you do that when you
come home? No, I'm a fidgeter!
I just want to get around,
I want to do things.
I'll be here, and I'll be over there.
I'll be doing this thing, and I'll be
wanting to go upstairs.
I'm not going to be doing that!
Watching you makes me tired!
THEY LAUGH
It takes just that
sort of relentless energy to create
something of precision and value.
Martin's done that with the frame.
It delivers a great
thing in architecture -
the pleasure of simplicity.
The joy of a design like this
is that even a five-year-old
can understand it.
In fact, if you asked
a five-year-old to design
a timber frame of a house,
they would do something like this.
There's the first floor going in.
Da-dah!
What this reminds me
of is traditional barns
and traditional buildings.
And indeed, if this frame had been
built out of oak,
say 500 years ago, all it would have
required would be a couple of
little braces here and here and here
and here, where there's a window.
And there you are, you see?
It would look like a sort
of a half-timbered medieval
box-frame timber house.
Or, for that matter,
an ancient barn.
Local barns inspired
Martin and Kae's project.
But not the sort of elegant
medieval structures
people long to convert into homes.
Oh, no.
Bizarrely, they like these
brutal steel-framed buildings.
Why are we here? Why are we looking
at an agricultural covered yard?
Because I've got one of these.
They're not... Is this inspiration?
It is.
We wanted to do something
which had some presence to it,
some volume to it.
It's a beautiful, simple, structural
form that we wanted to replicate.
There's a familiarity to the shape.
They're built on the periphery
of villages, into the farmland.
There's a familiar part of materials.
They tend to be concrete blockwork
and timber cladding.
And it's a building that's spacious,
it's large, it's got a presence.
But it doesn't feel...
out of place. Yeah.
What is it about them
that appeals to you?
As far as I was concerned, when
we set out to build our own house,
I thought of something very, very
contemporary. Flat-roof, very sleek.
But because of where we are, very
early in conversation with planners,
we had to have a pitched roof
to part of the building,
if not the whole building.
And as soon as that happened,
you then have to be very careful
of not doing little Noddy houses.
So that's where it started.
So you were looking for something
else, almost, that kind of...
Something else.
We look at our village -
we've got these, you know,
pretty little Noddy houses.
And at the back are all these
agricultural buildings.
And it happens three, four,
five times, just in our village.
So it was that negative rejection
of the conventional that drove you,
as it were, just to look for the
unconventional that was around you.
We didn't have to look far.
I mean, all you have to do is
open your eyes a little bit further,
look out. Don't look at the houses,
just step a little bit to the side
and all of a sudden, whang! We've got
all this inspiration beside us.
I think functional agricultural
buildings are a great source
of inspiration for rural
contemporary architecture.
But goodness me, you've got
to think hard about how
to make them comfortable.
Happily, on site a week later,
stud walls are going up
and the modern comfort of insulation
is a welcome addition.
Martin's giant super-spanning
frame can accommodate
a lot of trades
doing a lot of things.
So, one team are putting
in the panelled walls,
while Martin's main contractor,
Jim, works on the roof.
We're sort of on target.
The walls are still going up
as the roof's going on.
It's a good system, basically.
With the frame,
it's allowed everyone to get on
with the bits they need to do.
So it should be watertight
in about a week or so.
When they reach that point,
it'll be difficult
and expensive to change anything.
So Martin's made a snap decision
to beef up the structure
of the attic, thereby making an
extra habitable room that he wanted,
at an extra cost of 7,000.
It made perfect sense to
just adapt the trusses slightly
so that we could use them
in the future.
I didn't tell Kae about this,
but I had instructed the contractor
to modify the trusses
at a small expense.
Now we're up here,
they're such great rooms
and I think Kae is slowly
beginning to warm to them.
I'm not so sure.
It's our house, and I suppose
he's taken some liberties.
Because, you know, when the
architect - my husband - says,
"Oh, we need loft rafters",
I'm going to go, "Of course."
You know, I'm not going to
argue with that.
And then it turns out that these
loft rafters actually means
that there's an extra
room that we never needed.
The loft rafters aren't just a bite
out of their 400,000 budget,
they're a sizeable chunk out
of Kae's money for the interior.
And this has had a knock-on
effect on, you know,
things like our kitchen budget
and our bathroom budget.
So he now either has to go and work
harder, and earn more money so
I can have my bathroom, or, I don't
know, make some changes elsewhere.
Their financial
worries are stacking up.
They're already ?100,000 short
of being able to finish,
and they're trying to borrow at a
time when banks don't want to lend.
Of course, it's important to spend
the money on the structure
and the insulation,
but every home needs running water,
a bathroom,
somewhere comfortable to sit, maybe.
I'm a bit concerned about the money.
And I suppose I'm worried
about at the end of the process.
Because this has happened to us
before, that you get to the lovely
part where I want to go and choose
curtains and scatter cushions
and we go, "No money, Kae.
Sorry."
and our last place was awesome,
but we had no sofa to sit on!
And you can't have a room
without a sofa!
It would be a nightmare for Kae
if history repeated itself here.
In their last home that they worked
on together,
converting an old forge,
Martin spent all their money
on the fabric of the building.
Here, he seems to be reverting
to type, investing in insulation
and the eye-wateringly expensive
?45,000 triple-glazed windows.
That's brilliant. Brilliant to see
them, great. Really good.
They are selected primarily
for their good heat loss performance.
The gods of efficiency
and performance are venerated
in Martin's life.
They are in his blood.
My natural instinct is to design
rational, rhythmic spaces,
simple forms. The building is
definitely an expression of me.
I think you just have to look around
and see how square it is!
HE LAUGHS
Square and practical don't always
make for a warm, homely environment.
But here, Martin's rational approach
extends to the generosity
of the layout
and some thoughtful arrangements.
All your partitions are going up,
then.
It's a much more divided space
upstairs, isn't it?
Conventional, in that way.
Yeah. And very cosy. Yeah.
This will be, of course, open.
Void, yeah. Void here. Void there.
And the steps up to the attic.
Kind of enticing, that, isn't it?
Narrow, sweet little stairs.
We've also got that little
door that we want to put
into their bedrooms, to interlink
their bedrooms. This one?
Yeah. Where does it go? Into the
stud wall? Yeah. Look at that!
It's going to have little
interlinking bedrooms! Lovely.
SHE LAUGHS
You want to try and go through?!
You could get your vacuum cleaner
through there, couldn't you? Just...
The door links
the two bedrooms together. Narnia!
I think that's
on the one hand very lovely,
and on the other hand,
extremely pedestrian! You know!
"Where does this door lead? Oh,
into my sister's bedroom. Great(!)"
You know!
But, no, I love the idea. Fun thing.
Martin's approach - thank
the gods of rationality - is softer,
and more humorous than I thought.
He's even designed in one or two
elements of quirkiness
for Kae to evolve
as she develops the design.
You'll have noticed the little
door that's going to be placed
in between the children's bedrooms.
Like the door to Narnia.
This narrow little staircase leading
up to the second floor attic,
which is charming
and slightly Olde Worlde.
The attic itself, which is going
to become a play space.
Outside, a little deck.
And beyond it, another room
in the far attic space there,
which is only accessible
from up here.
I mean, all these little
extra devices are examples
of a slightly more playful
nature in the building.
And I think - I hope - we're
going to see a bit more of that.
Martin and Kay are bringing
a lifetime of architectural
and construction experience
to their project here in Yorkshire.
They've been on site 16 weeks
and already Kay
is supervising the installation
of her handmade kitchen
into the heart of the mothership.
Is that about where
it's supposed to be?
It's a bit skewed at the moment,
isn't it? Yeah, it is. OK.
Martin's background in the world of
functional, commercial architecture
did lead me to think that
this house could end a bit, well...
...dry.
But, slowly, little touches
of playfulness are creeping in.
Easy access for the kids
to be fighting with each other.
What do you think
about that problem, then?
Kay is now assuming
more and more responsibility,
adapting Martin's designs
and developing them.
So, she's taken the pink bricks
from the cladding
and is using them
for an inside wall.
Was this your idea?
It was Kay's idea. Yes.
It was Kay's idea.
I've got loads of ideas,
it's just getting them
through Martin's system,
which is painful.
Got to go through
my strict quality control.
If it's not in my mind,
not in my vision,
I need to be shown it and convinced
about it and illustrated.
It's quite hard work for Kay,
because I spend a lot of time...
Blimey, you've turned into
the client all of a sudden...
Yeah, I know.
..have to visualising something.
So the roles reversed, almost?
Absolutely.
If you had total control
over this building,
what would you be putting in?
What kind of kitchen?
Oh, it would be dull.
Oh, God! It'd be white.
This is one of the things
which I experienced last night
when I came into the kitchen.
I said to Kay, back at home,
"You've done a fantastic job.
"It's beautiful what
you're doing with this kitchen.
"You're bringing in such a lot
of character and her personality
"into the materials
which I could not do.
"It would just be a white kitchen."
It's a wise man who can
acknowledge his limitations.
But, creativity costs money.
Kay has overspent.
Her wall has cost ?4,000 extra.
It's money they can ill afford,
because they are still
waiting to hear from the bank
about the ?100,000
they need to borrow.
We did feel that we weren't asking
for much money to finish
and we've just been surprised
at just the ridiculous amount
of questions that they are asking.
But we've got a plan,
we have spoken to our parents.
Our parents, on both sides,
have been very supportive
and lending us what they can.
We've got about 60%
of what we felt we need
and we are going to economise
and bring the building under budget.
They've borrowed ?55,000
from their parents
which should keep the project going
while they wait to hear
from the bank.
Assuming all is well,
Kay heads to York to see
a painter friend of hers, Donna,
who's helping with a big idea
for the interior.
Hello. Pleased to meet you.
How are you? Very well, thanks.
Is this your space? It is, yes.
What is it you're asking
of Donna to do for you?
I'd like to commission Donna to do
a painting for our main lounge.
Yeah. A large piece
that reflects the Yorkshire Moors.
Then the colour schemes
that she uses within the painting,
I would like her to use
specific colours in there
to decorate the rest of the house.
So painting comes first,
decorative scheme comes second? Yes.
Out of a painting like that? Yes.
One of the most important processes
is, I'll trudge round,
I'll take the dog, my husband,
we'll go in rain, we'll go in wind,
we'll go in sun,
so that you really capture that.
I've got to get a know a subject
first. The changing landscape? Yeah.
Because I'm quite restricted
with the children and I'm indoors
and I'm at home and I'm trying
to work and be a mum.
It's quite nice to know
that there's someone out there
who's doing the walking of the dog!
Yeah. Sure.
I can look at that painting
and can dream about, you know...
There's a romance in that,
isn't there? It is.
Like reading Wordsworth.
You're taken there, you're
transplanted there. That's art.
It contrasts very strongly
with the rationality
of the design, doesn't it?
I think that's probably
why I'm so quiet at the moment,
because it's polar opposite to
the way I approach design and art.
It's great that we have this.
I think the philosophies
are all starting to come together.
You've got this very functional home
and then it's going to have
beautiful things which are
a bit more free
and a bit more less thought about
and just more expression of feeling.
But all of that together makes
for a good environment for children,
for people, for, you know,
to enjoy company.
That's ultimately what life's
all about, is making connections
with different people on different
levels in a lovely environment.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Donna's painting is an important
element in establishing Kay's
lovely environment.
It will set the colour palate,
the mood
and the energy
of the decorative scheme.
So, Donna's off to the Yorkshire
Moors to do a preliminary piece.
It's a great challenge
for an artist,
but it's also
a great responsibility.
I wake up at night thinking,
what if they don't like it?
I'm out here doing lots
of abstract shapes, organic shapes,
you know, pebbles, grass,
the non-perfect shapes.
Yet, Martin,
he's designing a beautiful bespoke
piece of architecture
that's straight.
There's that lovely structure
and order and hopefully the piece
will almost roll in like a river
coming down the landscape, you know.
It's playful, organic,
it's non-perfect, it's changeable.
But sit in that lovely,
perfect architectural structure.
It's now May
and they are five months
into their seven-month programme.
There's no word yet from the bank
about their mortgage
and they're down
to their last ?30,000.
The builders are working all hours,
plastering and plasterboarding.
Martin and Kay have to move in
in a month,
when the lease
on their bungalow runs out.
You know, this project is not
your average three-year build.
It's not a marathon
that requires stamina.
Instead, this is a 200-metre sprint
to the finishing line,
where every tiny mistake costs you.
At the moment, there are plasterers,
electricians, plumbers,
joiners, cabinet-makers,
all working around each other.
Driving the project at this speed,
mistakes are inevitable.
It's unfortunate that Kay
has discovered the biggest one
in her precious kitchen,
Mothership HQ.
How did we end up with
the oven where it is? Erm...
It was the height.
Because it's too low,
so we are going to have
to do something about that.
Right.
So one idea is, I mean...
..how difficult will it be
to make this cupboard shorter?
Very difficult.
It will mean remaking the doors.
Well, we are going to have
to do that. It's a beautiful unit,
it's just a little snag here,
which we've got to get right.
So who pays for that, Kay?
You do. No, I do not.
I didn't do the drawing.
Who did the drawing?
The problem is, we had quite
a lot of hand-drawn drawings. Ah.
Some beautiful samples
and a lot of enthusiasm
and I didn't feel, at that point
I wanted to go down the,
"Martin can you please draw up
an AutoCAD drawing,"
and maybe... Mm-hm.
..I should have done that,
so it's just one of these things
that, kind of, got lost
in translation and we have got
to solve it now.
You've got to clarify
the translation now.
It's late May.
By now, all the major jobs on the
project should have been finished.
But where there should be sleek,
agricultural cladding,
there's nothing.
Unfortunately for Martin and Kay,
the money's run out
and the bank have finally
got back to them about the loan
they applied for.
Just yesterday, they finally said
after six months of deliberation,
we are not going to be able
to lend on this occasion.
Sorry,
here's your application back.
We knew full well that this was
not going to be an easy project
to borrow on, because of
our own personal circumstances.
We are self-employed,
with a relatively new business.
So that, as well as it
being a self-build,
has magnified to the stage
where I feel they've just...
They've reached the limit
on what they are prepared to go to.
What is your Plan B?
Do you have one?
No, not really,
to be honest with you.
A bake-off at the school.
We've got a few things
that we could possibly, I suppose,
sell on and what have you -
family heirlooms. We are not talking
about a lot of money.
We are talking about scratching
together now ?20,000 or ?30,000.
Because that little ?20,000
or ?30,000 is the difference
between having all
the bathrooms done,
having the kitchen done to the spec
that I wanted. And the cladding?
And the cladding.
The cladding's got to be done.
As it stands though, they don't
have enough to finish the house
and that's a hard thing for
an architect to tell their client,
let alone a husband
to tell his wife!
I am sad that I'm not able to,
at this moment in time,
give Kay her finished building.
That is... That is difficult for me.
At the moment,
Kay is in a position where
I don't think you've really
gone off the building.
It's to such an extent where
if it's not going to be finished,
it's not going to be a home, is it?
Well, no, it's just the same old,
same old - another building project.
Just a shell,
with bits of wires hanging out
and kids tripping over.
But it's not, is it?
It's so close to it being something.
No, it's a fantasy
until it's finished, Martin.
It's a fantasy until it's finished.
People do this all the time.
They go and live in these
old fantastic buildings
or these new builds, and they live
there. "Oh, it's going to be great.
"Oh, it's going to be wonderful."
You find, 12 years down the line,
the children have moved out
and it's still just a fantasy,
because the floor's not finished,
you never got round
to doing that counter top
because something else cropped up
that you had to spend five grand on,
or this or that.
So you must get it finished? Yes.
After the two years of planning
and the Herculean effort
they've both made in creating their
family's home, the thought of moving
into a shell must be heartbreaking.
The little money they do have,
Martin and Kay
are spending cleverly,
finishing the interior,
making it as habitable as they can
for when they have
to move in in two weeks.
This little bathroom
is the only corner of the building
which has been finished.
Kay said to me, she'd
rather like to build a building
from the inside out, starting
with this kind of stuff, then
finishing with the insulation
and the cladding, because if you
do it the conventional way round,
there's no money left
when you get to the end.
Their solution here
is not to clad their home,
to fit it out and to leave the
external skin until the very end,
when they can see how much money
they really have got left over.
And if there is none,
well, then this little wall
may be the only cladding
in this house.
When I last saw Martin and Kae,
they were ?30,000 short of
what they needed to finish
their plain-speaking Yorkshire home.
So they decided to
concentrate on the inside
and leave the exterior unfinished.
But what on earth's happened?
Praise be. It looks finished.
It's got cladding.
HE LAUGHS
Hello. Hiya.
It's magnificent. Thank you.
Thank you, yeah.
It has great presence. It's a piece
of fine joinery, this cladding.
It's not really just...
It's not Yorkshire boarding.
It's not just been banged in.
There's a lot of work
gone into this.
The end result is actually
a very machined facade
and not at all agricultural in that
respect, but it's what we wanted.
It was what I wanted.
It's like you need a barn to be
to live in it, to make it a house.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
'Martin's used a sustainable
Brazilian hardwood to clad his home.
'It's super-durable
and four times stronger than larch.
'Its colour is rich and dark,
offset against the brickwork which
'was deliberately chosen to mimic
the colour of concrete blockwork.
'All very robust.
All very beautiful.'
How have you afforded to do
the cladding?
We've cut back on some
spec on certain items.
We've been able to borrow a bit more
money from our parents.
And the two things come together.
Just in the middle. Just covered it.
There's a feeling that we can
now just sit back
and enjoy it for a bit.
Kae, this is a man who,
historically,
hasn't finished buildings
because you run out of money.
Hmm.
I've had to cut back on the spec,
didn't I?
There were certain things like tiles
and taps and sinks,
but, on the other hand,
I enjoy recycling and upcycling
and finding bits and bobs
and putting it together
and I think that gives
the house character.
'This handsome building cost,
in the end, ?385,000.
'15 grand less
than their original budget.
'It's all thanks to Kae's
economising.
'Not that it shows.'
Oh, well,
it's pretty darned perfect.
The wall, your very expensive brick
wall, looks very fine.
'This interior has all
the depth of somewhere that's been
'lived in for a decade.
'The mothership has been furnished
with handmade recycled glass
'light fittings and a jumble
of timber finishes and materials.'
It has no self-conscious guile
or pretence and I like it.
The entire kitchen I like
because it sort of looks as
though it's sort of come together
almost by habit. Stop.
What do you mean "stop"?
No-one's allowed on this side of the
counter but me. Come on. Seriously?
Yeah, not even me... This
is my mothership. ..till Thursday.
This is the centre console? Yeah.
It's like the Panopticon prison
of the 19th century, from where
one prison warder could look out and
see what all the inmates are up to.
Yeah, about sums it up!
'From here, Kae can keep an eye on
the kids as they play in the lounge,
'or hear them above on the bridge.
'This is where design
facilitates good parenting.'
So what can you do in this kitchen
you couldn't previously do?
I can stand on one leg
and make 27 bacon sandwiches.
It's a proper pivot kitchen
cos from this spot here
I can pretty much pivot on one leg
and do everything.
I can cook my bacon, butter my
27 pieces of bread times two.
Put everything in the dishwasher,
wash my hands
and come back to this point to serve
and then
when everybody brings everything back
I can just go backwards...
The other way. ..and put it all back
again. Counter-rotate.
And I never have to move.
All on one leg.
It's got everything I need
just around me. Just grab and go.
Everything works
and this kitchen makes everything
done in half the time and easy.
The very autobiographical
and loose way in which Kae has
furnished this place needs
the organisation and arithmetical
precision of Martin's work.
Although, it has to be said that
his spaces are VERY generous.
'The ceilings are high
and the rooms are gently separated.'
Is that? That's Donna's painting.
Is that the one? Powerful, isn't it?
I think it's lovely, yeah. Does it do
what you hoped it would do?
Yeah, it captures all the walks I'd
love to be doing right now.
What I find hilarious is that the
room is furnished with
beautiful antiques
and gorgeous soft furnishings and...
very long steel bolts sticking
out of the side of the Glulam
timber to rip your shin on.
I have insisted they're not cut off.
NOT cut off?! No, no, no, no, no.
I'd insist that they would be.
No, at the moment,
it's in this room where the real
heart of the house is still visible.
It's left at its most exposed.
Those bolts will remain the length
they are right
until the moment the first
child is hospitalised.
The Glulams themselves,
of course, are great,
because this is
a free-standing column.
That one forms
the end of that book case.
The one beyond that is actually
part of a wall now
but the rhythms are set up in the
building, aren't they? Exactly.
The strength of the rhythm is here
and then there's
so much you can do within that.
And we've had some fun.
I've had some fun with this
because you can experiment at each
location but with a different
kind of junction detail.
The rich detailing throughout is
as you'd expect from Mr Precision.
There are thin shadow gaps running
alongside every Glulam beam.
Junctions are carefully
thought through.
It all adds up to an impression
of a properly crafted building.
But Martin and Kae took some design
risks here as well.
The building IS very open.
This landing, I've never quite
understood what it was about.
It's not private, is it?
Waiting room. A spill-out area.
The idea started by just
taking what it was,
just a circulation area,
and expanding it.
We've tried to do that with all
the areas of the house.
This space becomes
an extension of the rooms...
And tight landings,
especially in family life can be very
difficult when you're very
busy in the mornings,
not having enough space to...
"You get to your room, you get to the
bathroom, you brush your teeth."
So it gives enough space to do those
little crossovers. Yeah.
There is a lot of fun here.
It proves that the rational approach
to structure need have no
bearing on the level of formality
and enjoyment in a building.
There's a lot of light here too.
The rooms are airy
and the relationships between inside
and out, house and landscape,
barn-like structure
and decoration are really developed.
Even the glamorous bathroom
has an internal wall of agricultural
cladding.
And, just as you'd find on a farm,
Martin's plant room also
serves as an office.
It's a properly made, properly
finished, healthy house layered with
a degree of charm, and do you know,
it only took seven months to build.
One thing I can not quite get over
is how fast this has been.
It's called bacon sandwiches,
good old-fashioned
Yorkshire mentality
and that whip I've got
upstairs underneath the bed.
Don't bring your private
life into this.
Living next door, we've been here
every day just keeping
the momentum up
and making very quick decisions.
It's easy to say now that we worked
collaboratively
but it hasn't felt like that.
It's been a battle.
But it has been a collaboration,
that's the point.
Out of that battle, you have
established a working relationship.
Yes, we have. It's been stressful
because of a lot of things.
I suppose our big thing has been
for you just to relax a bit more
and for me to probably be a bit more
responsible and not as careless.
That's helped.
I'll ask you first,
but is there a bit of the building,
a moment that you've discovered,
a view of stuff, that you think,
"Wow, that blows me away?"
I love our bathroom.
It's a very nice place for me.
And I love the view
when you come down the stairs
looking out that window.
What about you, Martin?
Um, I think
my favourite room is the plant room.
It's got some great
equipment in there.
Would you like to enumerate things
that you love about the plant room?
I like the pipework.
I like all the electrics.
I like the fact that, in the end,
the building as a piece
of architecture, fascinates you less
than the engineering of it all.
Here's the architect speaking.
There's quite a nice building
attached these pipes.
I think I could live among the pipes
quite happily, myself.
And in the attached building.
It's a charming
and amenable container for living in
and a great joint effort.
So, agricultural barn meets
domestic dwelling.
Magical mothership meets
metal warehouse.
Rational clinical meets soft
and soulful and there's Martin
and Kae meeting right in the middle
to deliver what I think is
a staggeringly good home.
Of course, there are many ways to
work together, many ways to
demonstrate that a building can be
greater than the sum of its parts.
That is doesn't need to be the
result of one individual's dogma.
And therein lies
the brilliance of collaboration.
We were going out on a dawn patrol
when I stepped on an improvised
explosive device.
That shouldn't look like the average
disabled toilet. Yeah. Exactly.
Have you done it before? No.
?170,000 gone.
We're building a house.
We've now got a child on the way.
I'm up early in the morning.
I'm out in the fresh air loving life.
KEVIN LAUGHS
I do like it.
family life?
Well, I'd argue
it's down to three things.
A chaotic, relentless diary,
plastic play furniture everywhere
and a general anxiety about
where the children are
and what they're doing right now
to each other.
And if you were to design the ideal
setting for such a family life,
the perfect home,
what form would it take?
What single idea
would underscore it?
I'd suggest it's the mothership.
SHEEP BLEAT IN DISTANCE
What's that?
Three years ago,
Martin and Kae Walker bought
this 1960s bungalow in Yorkshire,
complete with outdoor swimming pool.
With some big ambitions for
transforming it into a model home
for their growing family.
But they fell out of love with it
when they realised their plan
wasn't going to work.
The cost to get this house to a level
where we'd like it to be
is probably going to be...
Same as building from scratch.
The cost of building
a house from scratch.
It's so cold, we can't heat it. It
costs a fortune and it's never warm.
It's damp.
All the windows need replacing.
For architect Martin and art
director Kae, the best thing about
the bungalow was the edge of village
two acre plot it came with.
They decided to split the sites,
put the bungalow on the market
and build a brave, new world
for themselves
right on site, next door
from scratch.
We are going to try
and put a whole lot of our own design
and living aspirations
into the house.
We have the opportunity to create
something truly unique to us.
But the "us" with Martin
and Kae is a complicated mix.
They are different people
with different ideas.
While Kae wants their new house
to be cosy and relaxed,
Martin's natural state
is anything but.
He is a wired individual,
a commercial architect whose gods
are precision and rationality.
I have got a massive drive inside me
to be uber-functional.
And it's an opportunity for me to
design the perfect functional house.
You're an architect,
designing your own house,
but I don't want to lose
track of what's important.
Getting our children to have
a happy life in this house
is important for us.
It's not just about
you and I designing something.
It's for our children, too.
Kae's fierce determination to stand
up to Martin is not without reason.
He has form.
He rebuilt the previous home,
an old forge in Kent, and spent
all their money on the structure,
leaving nothing for furnishings.
Theirs might be called
a healthy tension,
a yin and yang relationship.
But they have agreed on a design,
and they're not hanging around.
They've already got
the scaffolding up.
How would you describe
what it is you're doing?
The idea is
it's kind of a mothership.
The kitchen is
the heart of the home.
It's right in the centre
of the house.
Everything kind of
flows off there.
You've got family
living on the one side
and grown-ups living on the other
side and the same again upstairs.
How would you describe the design?
It's going to be open plan internally
with no load-bearing walls,
so I was keen for the timber frame.
I've got choices between concrete,
steel and timber,
timber was the most sustainable
and the cheapest.
As a commercial architect,
Martin's reputation is for high-end
factories and offices,
big, heavy duty buildings, and his
family home will be no exception.
The skeleton will be
a series of repeated bays
made up of 100 pieces
of very thick timber.
Glue laminated beams
to keep the ground floor as
open and flexible as possible.
Into the timber skeleton go
thickly insulated timber panels.
Kae, meanwhile, plans to customise
the interior with different colours,
to mark out the laundry room,
toilet, playroom and the living room
which all radiate
from the large kitchen
at the centre of the house.
This is Mothership HQ.
Kae's command centre,
where she can socialise, work, cook
and simultaneously perform
as a 21st-century supermum.
When she can't see the children,
she'll be able to hear them
through two voids in the first floor
which effectively form a wide bridge
that will connect
four generously sized bedrooms.
The floor above will hold a playroom
and a store for the mechanical heat
recovery and ventilation unit,
that'll make this a healthy
and cost-effective house to live in.
A big inspiration for Martin
and Kae were the local barns.
Like them, this place will be
clad in block work at the bottom
and some timber boarding above.
The ridged roof will be broken
with a central, flat access deck
to present a staggered skyline
to the surrounding houses.
Martin's design takes everything
he's good at and interested in
and attempts to reinvent it
for the house.
Of course, he's worked
on bigger projects than this,
he's just never had to pick up
the tab for any of them.
So, what do you hope to spend?
400. 400.
If we can do it for 400
it'll be really good.
The money to build this comes
from what, selling the bungalow?
Selling the bungalow. We sold
the bungalow... We have the cash.
And is there a mortgage on that,
you've still got to pay or you
can be mortgage free? A tiny one.
A small mortgage on that
which we can't transfer.
It's a mortgage worth £100,000.
It's not vast, but I'd be
cautious about getting any
amount of money from a bank
in a recession.
Having sold the house,
where are you going to live
for the duration of the project?
Back in the house.
Back in the house. How come?
Because we're going to rent it
off the buyers.
You've sold it and renting it
back. When have you got to be out?
I think June but... June.
Are you confident you are going to
get what you want out of him?
Oh, erm...
We've been there. No, we have...
The design part was tricky,
we fought a lot.
It was aesthetics really,
about how things looked.
Sometimes Martin's architect head
doesn't always function family life.
That could kick up a few...
What do you mean by that?
Like staircases without banisters
or polished concrete floors.
You just go, "You do realise
you've got children
"that are just going to
fall down the stairs!"
That's perhaps because he's
a commercial architect and designing
homes for people isn't part of his
usual architectural repertoire.
Ordinarily, if you wanted to employ
an architect to design you a house,
I'd say find one who has
designed plenty of them
for other people, who's really
specialist in that subject
and who has a natural affinity
with domestic architecture.
Martin, I think,
is a great architect.
His speciality, however,
is warehouses.
This type of repetitive but precise
architecture really appeals to me.
It's got that kind of construction,
almost toy-like quality.
It's the model.
It's almost back to the model.
I was fascinated by models,
I loved taking things apart.
Kae couldn't be more different.
She couldn't care less about
how things fit together.
Her job as interior designer on this
project starts when Martin's
finished the structure, when
she will take over the budget.
We'd have to move that wall
purely for the aesthetical reasons.
Her priority is to make
an enjoyable,
delightful home for their family.
She's built a virtual
walk-through of it.
I very much want the interior spaces
to be fun, colourful, happy.
3D modelling gives you
so many more options.
But sometimes with this house
it's become a bit of an evil thing
because it becomes too easy to go,
"What if we just, what if we just?"
And one day you have to make
a choice and you have to build it.
Years of collaborative virtual
modelling and planning mean that
Martin and Kae are confident they'll
have their house up in seven months.
In mid-December work
starts on their frame,
and it's a very strange
thing indeed.
It's made up of glue laminated
timber, or Glulam, with steelwork,
materials as opposite
as Martin and Kae themselves.
It's rare to see timber and steel
hybrid frames like this
on a domestic project.
We have got a lot of steel in here.
That is to get that stability
and rigidity,
so we don't have something that's
going to topple around.
We are creating a simple
portal frame,
so we need that
rigidity at the connections.
For Martin, it's a very precise and
tried and tested way of building.
He's not one to take risks,
unlike Kae, who's taken
and unconventional, eccentric
approach to sourcing contractors.
Most of the tradesmen
and women
that we're using on the build
come from the school playground.
A lot has been done through
us mums chatting.
I got our main contractor, Jim.
He is the husband of a very good
friend of mine.
I'm still on the lookout
for a decent joiner.
I think it's just so fantastic to
use the people we see every day.
This is different from your
run-of-the-mill extensions
and small newbuilds and that kind
of thing. It's not standard stuff.
It's the biggest job
we've taken on.
In the New Year, one month
into their seven-month programme,
the hybrid Glulam
and steel frame arrives.
For engineer Martin, it's a
giant £70,000 Meccano set
and he can't wait to play
with it in his back garden.
He's beside himself!
I've been up since, I don't know,
five o'clock,
twitching at the curtains,
waiting for it to arrive.
Terribly excited, really excited.
I can't believe we've started.
Yeah, thrilled.
It's the day we've been waiting for.
This is an exercise
in engineering systems.
In rational construction,
repetition and efficiency.
In creating an outstanding
vision of symmetrical beauty,
it helps to have
symmetrical workers.
OK. We're identical twins.
A lot of the time on site we get
asked, "Do you two know each other?"
You could say that, yeah.
Or the other one is,
somebody will come over
and speak to Martin
thinking that it's me.
"I thought I told you to do that
an hour ago,"
and not realise it was me
that they'd told. We get all that.
The number of times I've got him
in trouble not wearing my hardhat!
In the hands of a less
particular architect
and less skilled workers,
the jointing of flexible timber and
rigid steel could seem clumsy.
But Martin's mind
ticks like a machine.
Every junction is planned,
every measurement perfect.
Today was a pivotal day
for the build.
The day when it arrives
on the back of a lorry
was my climax of the build for me.
I can see the rhythm of the frame
coming up,
I can see its symmetry,
the finish looks great.
I love the exposed fittings and...
Yeah, it's what I'd hoped
and more, really.
Of course he loves it.
Like the very best of his
commercial buildings,
this place is conceptually
and structurally simple
and elegantly rational.
But it needs to be more than that.
How shall I put this, Martin is
a bit of an obsessive enthusiast,
he's a detail man.
He likes things to be absolutely
clear, he likes his layouts
to be straightforward and simple,
functional.
He likes things to be lined up.
Look, I'm the same.
I do like all my slot headed screws
to be organised in the same way.
I do like detail.
And you need this in a building,
you need your handles not to
fall off, you need a layout which is
really clear and easy to understand,
elegant and straightforward.
However, architecture
also needs soul,
it needs passion.
So I think, erm... cue Kae.
One month has passed since Martin
and Kae started, and the house
has already adopted a straight,
no-nonsense Yorkshire character.
But as well as being a Yorkshireman,
Martin's an experienced
and successful architect,
with plenty of commercial building
experience.
Which is perhaps why, in the raw,
this naked frame looks like
it's going to be a car showroom.
It's quite big, isn't it? It's not
delicate, it's quite "umph".
It's chunky.
Chunky and solid and assertive.
To be honest, I think the really
interesting thing about the frame
at the moment,
there's a huge difference
between what we can see now, to what
you can see when it's completed.
Yeah. At the moment, you have that
solidity and strength to it,
and it looks very chunky.
That will completely transform
once we've got this wall section.
It will be expressed in places...
It will be expressed in places,
but you're not going to see
the full depth of it. No, no.
In truth, what you will see are the
outlines of the Glulam goalposts
repeated through the building.
Done in steel, this repetition would
have felt too powerful and clinical.
In timber, the result should be
quite the opposite.
There's a tremendous pleasure to be
derived from rationality, from
the simplicity, where every detail
is thought about and considered.
And I think that causes calmness,
and that's something that
I feel home should be. Yes.
I mean, the outside world
where we live is just mental
and hectic
and you're doing 300 things.
But when you come home, you just
want a sense of...
TAKES DEEP BREATH
You know. Do you do that when you
come home? No, I'm a fidgeter!
I just want to get around,
I want to do things.
I'll be here, and I'll be over there.
I'll be doing this thing, and I'll be
wanting to go upstairs.
I'm not going to be doing that!
Watching you makes me tired!
THEY LAUGH
It takes just that
sort of relentless energy to create
something of precision and value.
Martin's done that with the frame.
It delivers a great
thing in architecture -
the pleasure of simplicity.
The joy of a design like this
is that even a five-year-old
can understand it.
In fact, if you asked
a five-year-old to design
a timber frame of a house,
they would do something like this.
There's the first floor going in.
Da-dah!
What this reminds me
of is traditional barns
and traditional buildings.
And indeed, if this frame had been
built out of oak,
say 500 years ago, all it would have
required would be a couple of
little braces here and here and here
and here, where there's a window.
And there you are, you see?
It would look like a sort
of a half-timbered medieval
box-frame timber house.
Or, for that matter,
an ancient barn.
Local barns inspired
Martin and Kae's project.
But not the sort of elegant
medieval structures
people long to convert into homes.
Oh, no.
Bizarrely, they like these
brutal steel-framed buildings.
Why are we here? Why are we looking
at an agricultural covered yard?
Because I've got one of these.
They're not... Is this inspiration?
It is.
We wanted to do something
which had some presence to it,
some volume to it.
It's a beautiful, simple, structural
form that we wanted to replicate.
There's a familiarity to the shape.
They're built on the periphery
of villages, into the farmland.
There's a familiar part of materials.
They tend to be concrete blockwork
and timber cladding.
And it's a building that's spacious,
it's large, it's got a presence.
But it doesn't feel...
out of place. Yeah.
What is it about them
that appeals to you?
As far as I was concerned, when
we set out to build our own house,
I thought of something very, very
contemporary. Flat-roof, very sleek.
But because of where we are, very
early in conversation with planners,
we had to have a pitched roof
to part of the building,
if not the whole building.
And as soon as that happened,
you then have to be very careful
of not doing little Noddy houses.
So that's where it started.
So you were looking for something
else, almost, that kind of...
Something else.
We look at our village -
we've got these, you know,
pretty little Noddy houses.
And at the back are all these
agricultural buildings.
And it happens three, four,
five times, just in our village.
So it was that negative rejection
of the conventional that drove you,
as it were, just to look for the
unconventional that was around you.
We didn't have to look far.
I mean, all you have to do is
open your eyes a little bit further,
look out. Don't look at the houses,
just step a little bit to the side
and all of a sudden, whang! We've got
all this inspiration beside us.
I think functional agricultural
buildings are a great source
of inspiration for rural
contemporary architecture.
But goodness me, you've got
to think hard about how
to make them comfortable.
Happily, on site a week later,
stud walls are going up
and the modern comfort of insulation
is a welcome addition.
Martin's giant super-spanning
frame can accommodate
a lot of trades
doing a lot of things.
So, one team are putting
in the panelled walls,
while Martin's main contractor,
Jim, works on the roof.
We're sort of on target.
The walls are still going up
as the roof's going on.
It's a good system, basically.
With the frame,
it's allowed everyone to get on
with the bits they need to do.
So it should be watertight
in about a week or so.
When they reach that point,
it'll be difficult
and expensive to change anything.
So Martin's made a snap decision
to beef up the structure
of the attic, thereby making an
extra habitable room that he wanted,
at an extra cost of 7,000.
It made perfect sense to
just adapt the trusses slightly
so that we could use them
in the future.
I didn't tell Kae about this,
but I had instructed the contractor
to modify the trusses
at a small expense.
Now we're up here,
they're such great rooms
and I think Kae is slowly
beginning to warm to them.
I'm not so sure.
It's our house, and I suppose
he's taken some liberties.
Because, you know, when the
architect - my husband - says,
"Oh, we need loft rafters",
I'm going to go, "Of course."
You know, I'm not going to
argue with that.
And then it turns out that these
loft rafters actually means
that there's an extra
room that we never needed.
The loft rafters aren't just a bite
out of their 400,000 budget,
they're a sizeable chunk out
of Kae's money for the interior.
And this has had a knock-on
effect on, you know,
things like our kitchen budget
and our bathroom budget.
So he now either has to go and work
harder, and earn more money so
I can have my bathroom, or, I don't
know, make some changes elsewhere.
Their financial
worries are stacking up.
They're already ?100,000 short
of being able to finish,
and they're trying to borrow at a
time when banks don't want to lend.
Of course, it's important to spend
the money on the structure
and the insulation,
but every home needs running water,
a bathroom,
somewhere comfortable to sit, maybe.
I'm a bit concerned about the money.
And I suppose I'm worried
about at the end of the process.
Because this has happened to us
before, that you get to the lovely
part where I want to go and choose
curtains and scatter cushions
and we go, "No money, Kae.
Sorry."
and our last place was awesome,
but we had no sofa to sit on!
And you can't have a room
without a sofa!
It would be a nightmare for Kae
if history repeated itself here.
In their last home that they worked
on together,
converting an old forge,
Martin spent all their money
on the fabric of the building.
Here, he seems to be reverting
to type, investing in insulation
and the eye-wateringly expensive
?45,000 triple-glazed windows.
That's brilliant. Brilliant to see
them, great. Really good.
They are selected primarily
for their good heat loss performance.
The gods of efficiency
and performance are venerated
in Martin's life.
They are in his blood.
My natural instinct is to design
rational, rhythmic spaces,
simple forms. The building is
definitely an expression of me.
I think you just have to look around
and see how square it is!
HE LAUGHS
Square and practical don't always
make for a warm, homely environment.
But here, Martin's rational approach
extends to the generosity
of the layout
and some thoughtful arrangements.
All your partitions are going up,
then.
It's a much more divided space
upstairs, isn't it?
Conventional, in that way.
Yeah. And very cosy. Yeah.
This will be, of course, open.
Void, yeah. Void here. Void there.
And the steps up to the attic.
Kind of enticing, that, isn't it?
Narrow, sweet little stairs.
We've also got that little
door that we want to put
into their bedrooms, to interlink
their bedrooms. This one?
Yeah. Where does it go? Into the
stud wall? Yeah. Look at that!
It's going to have little
interlinking bedrooms! Lovely.
SHE LAUGHS
You want to try and go through?!
You could get your vacuum cleaner
through there, couldn't you? Just...
The door links
the two bedrooms together. Narnia!
I think that's
on the one hand very lovely,
and on the other hand,
extremely pedestrian! You know!
"Where does this door lead? Oh,
into my sister's bedroom. Great(!)"
You know!
But, no, I love the idea. Fun thing.
Martin's approach - thank
the gods of rationality - is softer,
and more humorous than I thought.
He's even designed in one or two
elements of quirkiness
for Kae to evolve
as she develops the design.
You'll have noticed the little
door that's going to be placed
in between the children's bedrooms.
Like the door to Narnia.
This narrow little staircase leading
up to the second floor attic,
which is charming
and slightly Olde Worlde.
The attic itself, which is going
to become a play space.
Outside, a little deck.
And beyond it, another room
in the far attic space there,
which is only accessible
from up here.
I mean, all these little
extra devices are examples
of a slightly more playful
nature in the building.
And I think - I hope - we're
going to see a bit more of that.
Martin and Kay are bringing
a lifetime of architectural
and construction experience
to their project here in Yorkshire.
They've been on site 16 weeks
and already Kay
is supervising the installation
of her handmade kitchen
into the heart of the mothership.
Is that about where
it's supposed to be?
It's a bit skewed at the moment,
isn't it? Yeah, it is. OK.
Martin's background in the world of
functional, commercial architecture
did lead me to think that
this house could end a bit, well...
...dry.
But, slowly, little touches
of playfulness are creeping in.
Easy access for the kids
to be fighting with each other.
What do you think
about that problem, then?
Kay is now assuming
more and more responsibility,
adapting Martin's designs
and developing them.
So, she's taken the pink bricks
from the cladding
and is using them
for an inside wall.
Was this your idea?
It was Kay's idea. Yes.
It was Kay's idea.
I've got loads of ideas,
it's just getting them
through Martin's system,
which is painful.
Got to go through
my strict quality control.
If it's not in my mind,
not in my vision,
I need to be shown it and convinced
about it and illustrated.
It's quite hard work for Kay,
because I spend a lot of time...
Blimey, you've turned into
the client all of a sudden...
Yeah, I know.
..have to visualising something.
So the roles reversed, almost?
Absolutely.
If you had total control
over this building,
what would you be putting in?
What kind of kitchen?
Oh, it would be dull.
Oh, God! It'd be white.
This is one of the things
which I experienced last night
when I came into the kitchen.
I said to Kay, back at home,
"You've done a fantastic job.
"It's beautiful what
you're doing with this kitchen.
"You're bringing in such a lot
of character and her personality
"into the materials
which I could not do.
"It would just be a white kitchen."
It's a wise man who can
acknowledge his limitations.
But, creativity costs money.
Kay has overspent.
Her wall has cost ?4,000 extra.
It's money they can ill afford,
because they are still
waiting to hear from the bank
about the ?100,000
they need to borrow.
We did feel that we weren't asking
for much money to finish
and we've just been surprised
at just the ridiculous amount
of questions that they are asking.
But we've got a plan,
we have spoken to our parents.
Our parents, on both sides,
have been very supportive
and lending us what they can.
We've got about 60%
of what we felt we need
and we are going to economise
and bring the building under budget.
They've borrowed ?55,000
from their parents
which should keep the project going
while they wait to hear
from the bank.
Assuming all is well,
Kay heads to York to see
a painter friend of hers, Donna,
who's helping with a big idea
for the interior.
Hello. Pleased to meet you.
How are you? Very well, thanks.
Is this your space? It is, yes.
What is it you're asking
of Donna to do for you?
I'd like to commission Donna to do
a painting for our main lounge.
Yeah. A large piece
that reflects the Yorkshire Moors.
Then the colour schemes
that she uses within the painting,
I would like her to use
specific colours in there
to decorate the rest of the house.
So painting comes first,
decorative scheme comes second? Yes.
Out of a painting like that? Yes.
One of the most important processes
is, I'll trudge round,
I'll take the dog, my husband,
we'll go in rain, we'll go in wind,
we'll go in sun,
so that you really capture that.
I've got to get a know a subject
first. The changing landscape? Yeah.
Because I'm quite restricted
with the children and I'm indoors
and I'm at home and I'm trying
to work and be a mum.
It's quite nice to know
that there's someone out there
who's doing the walking of the dog!
Yeah. Sure.
I can look at that painting
and can dream about, you know...
There's a romance in that,
isn't there? It is.
Like reading Wordsworth.
You're taken there, you're
transplanted there. That's art.
It contrasts very strongly
with the rationality
of the design, doesn't it?
I think that's probably
why I'm so quiet at the moment,
because it's polar opposite to
the way I approach design and art.
It's great that we have this.
I think the philosophies
are all starting to come together.
You've got this very functional home
and then it's going to have
beautiful things which are
a bit more free
and a bit more less thought about
and just more expression of feeling.
But all of that together makes
for a good environment for children,
for people, for, you know,
to enjoy company.
That's ultimately what life's
all about, is making connections
with different people on different
levels in a lovely environment.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Donna's painting is an important
element in establishing Kay's
lovely environment.
It will set the colour palate,
the mood
and the energy
of the decorative scheme.
So, Donna's off to the Yorkshire
Moors to do a preliminary piece.
It's a great challenge
for an artist,
but it's also
a great responsibility.
I wake up at night thinking,
what if they don't like it?
I'm out here doing lots
of abstract shapes, organic shapes,
you know, pebbles, grass,
the non-perfect shapes.
Yet, Martin,
he's designing a beautiful bespoke
piece of architecture
that's straight.
There's that lovely structure
and order and hopefully the piece
will almost roll in like a river
coming down the landscape, you know.
It's playful, organic,
it's non-perfect, it's changeable.
But sit in that lovely,
perfect architectural structure.
It's now May
and they are five months
into their seven-month programme.
There's no word yet from the bank
about their mortgage
and they're down
to their last ?30,000.
The builders are working all hours,
plastering and plasterboarding.
Martin and Kay have to move in
in a month,
when the lease
on their bungalow runs out.
You know, this project is not
your average three-year build.
It's not a marathon
that requires stamina.
Instead, this is a 200-metre sprint
to the finishing line,
where every tiny mistake costs you.
At the moment, there are plasterers,
electricians, plumbers,
joiners, cabinet-makers,
all working around each other.
Driving the project at this speed,
mistakes are inevitable.
It's unfortunate that Kay
has discovered the biggest one
in her precious kitchen,
Mothership HQ.
How did we end up with
the oven where it is? Erm...
It was the height.
Because it's too low,
so we are going to have
to do something about that.
Right.
So one idea is, I mean...
..how difficult will it be
to make this cupboard shorter?
Very difficult.
It will mean remaking the doors.
Well, we are going to have
to do that. It's a beautiful unit,
it's just a little snag here,
which we've got to get right.
So who pays for that, Kay?
You do. No, I do not.
I didn't do the drawing.
Who did the drawing?
The problem is, we had quite
a lot of hand-drawn drawings. Ah.
Some beautiful samples
and a lot of enthusiasm
and I didn't feel, at that point
I wanted to go down the,
"Martin can you please draw up
an AutoCAD drawing,"
and maybe... Mm-hm.
..I should have done that,
so it's just one of these things
that, kind of, got lost
in translation and we have got
to solve it now.
You've got to clarify
the translation now.
It's late May.
By now, all the major jobs on the
project should have been finished.
But where there should be sleek,
agricultural cladding,
there's nothing.
Unfortunately for Martin and Kay,
the money's run out
and the bank have finally
got back to them about the loan
they applied for.
Just yesterday, they finally said
after six months of deliberation,
we are not going to be able
to lend on this occasion.
Sorry,
here's your application back.
We knew full well that this was
not going to be an easy project
to borrow on, because of
our own personal circumstances.
We are self-employed,
with a relatively new business.
So that, as well as it
being a self-build,
has magnified to the stage
where I feel they've just...
They've reached the limit
on what they are prepared to go to.
What is your Plan B?
Do you have one?
No, not really,
to be honest with you.
A bake-off at the school.
We've got a few things
that we could possibly, I suppose,
sell on and what have you -
family heirlooms. We are not talking
about a lot of money.
We are talking about scratching
together now ?20,000 or ?30,000.
Because that little ?20,000
or ?30,000 is the difference
between having all
the bathrooms done,
having the kitchen done to the spec
that I wanted. And the cladding?
And the cladding.
The cladding's got to be done.
As it stands though, they don't
have enough to finish the house
and that's a hard thing for
an architect to tell their client,
let alone a husband
to tell his wife!
I am sad that I'm not able to,
at this moment in time,
give Kay her finished building.
That is... That is difficult for me.
At the moment,
Kay is in a position where
I don't think you've really
gone off the building.
It's to such an extent where
if it's not going to be finished,
it's not going to be a home, is it?
Well, no, it's just the same old,
same old - another building project.
Just a shell,
with bits of wires hanging out
and kids tripping over.
But it's not, is it?
It's so close to it being something.
No, it's a fantasy
until it's finished, Martin.
It's a fantasy until it's finished.
People do this all the time.
They go and live in these
old fantastic buildings
or these new builds, and they live
there. "Oh, it's going to be great.
"Oh, it's going to be wonderful."
You find, 12 years down the line,
the children have moved out
and it's still just a fantasy,
because the floor's not finished,
you never got round
to doing that counter top
because something else cropped up
that you had to spend five grand on,
or this or that.
So you must get it finished? Yes.
After the two years of planning
and the Herculean effort
they've both made in creating their
family's home, the thought of moving
into a shell must be heartbreaking.
The little money they do have,
Martin and Kay
are spending cleverly,
finishing the interior,
making it as habitable as they can
for when they have
to move in in two weeks.
This little bathroom
is the only corner of the building
which has been finished.
Kay said to me, she'd
rather like to build a building
from the inside out, starting
with this kind of stuff, then
finishing with the insulation
and the cladding, because if you
do it the conventional way round,
there's no money left
when you get to the end.
Their solution here
is not to clad their home,
to fit it out and to leave the
external skin until the very end,
when they can see how much money
they really have got left over.
And if there is none,
well, then this little wall
may be the only cladding
in this house.
When I last saw Martin and Kae,
they were ?30,000 short of
what they needed to finish
their plain-speaking Yorkshire home.
So they decided to
concentrate on the inside
and leave the exterior unfinished.
But what on earth's happened?
Praise be. It looks finished.
It's got cladding.
HE LAUGHS
Hello. Hiya.
It's magnificent. Thank you.
Thank you, yeah.
It has great presence. It's a piece
of fine joinery, this cladding.
It's not really just...
It's not Yorkshire boarding.
It's not just been banged in.
There's a lot of work
gone into this.
The end result is actually
a very machined facade
and not at all agricultural in that
respect, but it's what we wanted.
It was what I wanted.
It's like you need a barn to be
to live in it, to make it a house.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
'Martin's used a sustainable
Brazilian hardwood to clad his home.
'It's super-durable
and four times stronger than larch.
'Its colour is rich and dark,
offset against the brickwork which
'was deliberately chosen to mimic
the colour of concrete blockwork.
'All very robust.
All very beautiful.'
How have you afforded to do
the cladding?
We've cut back on some
spec on certain items.
We've been able to borrow a bit more
money from our parents.
And the two things come together.
Just in the middle. Just covered it.
There's a feeling that we can
now just sit back
and enjoy it for a bit.
Kae, this is a man who,
historically,
hasn't finished buildings
because you run out of money.
Hmm.
I've had to cut back on the spec,
didn't I?
There were certain things like tiles
and taps and sinks,
but, on the other hand,
I enjoy recycling and upcycling
and finding bits and bobs
and putting it together
and I think that gives
the house character.
'This handsome building cost,
in the end, ?385,000.
'15 grand less
than their original budget.
'It's all thanks to Kae's
economising.
'Not that it shows.'
Oh, well,
it's pretty darned perfect.
The wall, your very expensive brick
wall, looks very fine.
'This interior has all
the depth of somewhere that's been
'lived in for a decade.
'The mothership has been furnished
with handmade recycled glass
'light fittings and a jumble
of timber finishes and materials.'
It has no self-conscious guile
or pretence and I like it.
The entire kitchen I like
because it sort of looks as
though it's sort of come together
almost by habit. Stop.
What do you mean "stop"?
No-one's allowed on this side of the
counter but me. Come on. Seriously?
Yeah, not even me... This
is my mothership. ..till Thursday.
This is the centre console? Yeah.
It's like the Panopticon prison
of the 19th century, from where
one prison warder could look out and
see what all the inmates are up to.
Yeah, about sums it up!
'From here, Kae can keep an eye on
the kids as they play in the lounge,
'or hear them above on the bridge.
'This is where design
facilitates good parenting.'
So what can you do in this kitchen
you couldn't previously do?
I can stand on one leg
and make 27 bacon sandwiches.
It's a proper pivot kitchen
cos from this spot here
I can pretty much pivot on one leg
and do everything.
I can cook my bacon, butter my
27 pieces of bread times two.
Put everything in the dishwasher,
wash my hands
and come back to this point to serve
and then
when everybody brings everything back
I can just go backwards...
The other way. ..and put it all back
again. Counter-rotate.
And I never have to move.
All on one leg.
It's got everything I need
just around me. Just grab and go.
Everything works
and this kitchen makes everything
done in half the time and easy.
The very autobiographical
and loose way in which Kae has
furnished this place needs
the organisation and arithmetical
precision of Martin's work.
Although, it has to be said that
his spaces are VERY generous.
'The ceilings are high
and the rooms are gently separated.'
Is that? That's Donna's painting.
Is that the one? Powerful, isn't it?
I think it's lovely, yeah. Does it do
what you hoped it would do?
Yeah, it captures all the walks I'd
love to be doing right now.
What I find hilarious is that the
room is furnished with
beautiful antiques
and gorgeous soft furnishings and...
very long steel bolts sticking
out of the side of the Glulam
timber to rip your shin on.
I have insisted they're not cut off.
NOT cut off?! No, no, no, no, no.
I'd insist that they would be.
No, at the moment,
it's in this room where the real
heart of the house is still visible.
It's left at its most exposed.
Those bolts will remain the length
they are right
until the moment the first
child is hospitalised.
The Glulams themselves,
of course, are great,
because this is
a free-standing column.
That one forms
the end of that book case.
The one beyond that is actually
part of a wall now
but the rhythms are set up in the
building, aren't they? Exactly.
The strength of the rhythm is here
and then there's
so much you can do within that.
And we've had some fun.
I've had some fun with this
because you can experiment at each
location but with a different
kind of junction detail.
The rich detailing throughout is
as you'd expect from Mr Precision.
There are thin shadow gaps running
alongside every Glulam beam.
Junctions are carefully
thought through.
It all adds up to an impression
of a properly crafted building.
But Martin and Kae took some design
risks here as well.
The building IS very open.
This landing, I've never quite
understood what it was about.
It's not private, is it?
Waiting room. A spill-out area.
The idea started by just
taking what it was,
just a circulation area,
and expanding it.
We've tried to do that with all
the areas of the house.
This space becomes
an extension of the rooms...
And tight landings,
especially in family life can be very
difficult when you're very
busy in the mornings,
not having enough space to...
"You get to your room, you get to the
bathroom, you brush your teeth."
So it gives enough space to do those
little crossovers. Yeah.
There is a lot of fun here.
It proves that the rational approach
to structure need have no
bearing on the level of formality
and enjoyment in a building.
There's a lot of light here too.
The rooms are airy
and the relationships between inside
and out, house and landscape,
barn-like structure
and decoration are really developed.
Even the glamorous bathroom
has an internal wall of agricultural
cladding.
And, just as you'd find on a farm,
Martin's plant room also
serves as an office.
It's a properly made, properly
finished, healthy house layered with
a degree of charm, and do you know,
it only took seven months to build.
One thing I can not quite get over
is how fast this has been.
It's called bacon sandwiches,
good old-fashioned
Yorkshire mentality
and that whip I've got
upstairs underneath the bed.
Don't bring your private
life into this.
Living next door, we've been here
every day just keeping
the momentum up
and making very quick decisions.
It's easy to say now that we worked
collaboratively
but it hasn't felt like that.
It's been a battle.
But it has been a collaboration,
that's the point.
Out of that battle, you have
established a working relationship.
Yes, we have. It's been stressful
because of a lot of things.
I suppose our big thing has been
for you just to relax a bit more
and for me to probably be a bit more
responsible and not as careless.
That's helped.
I'll ask you first,
but is there a bit of the building,
a moment that you've discovered,
a view of stuff, that you think,
"Wow, that blows me away?"
I love our bathroom.
It's a very nice place for me.
And I love the view
when you come down the stairs
looking out that window.
What about you, Martin?
Um, I think
my favourite room is the plant room.
It's got some great
equipment in there.
Would you like to enumerate things
that you love about the plant room?
I like the pipework.
I like all the electrics.
I like the fact that, in the end,
the building as a piece
of architecture, fascinates you less
than the engineering of it all.
Here's the architect speaking.
There's quite a nice building
attached these pipes.
I think I could live among the pipes
quite happily, myself.
And in the attached building.
It's a charming
and amenable container for living in
and a great joint effort.
So, agricultural barn meets
domestic dwelling.
Magical mothership meets
metal warehouse.
Rational clinical meets soft
and soulful and there's Martin
and Kae meeting right in the middle
to deliver what I think is
a staggeringly good home.
Of course, there are many ways to
work together, many ways to
demonstrate that a building can be
greater than the sum of its parts.
That is doesn't need to be the
result of one individual's dogma.
And therein lies
the brilliance of collaboration.
We were going out on a dawn patrol
when I stepped on an improvised
explosive device.
That shouldn't look like the average
disabled toilet. Yeah. Exactly.
Have you done it before? No.
?170,000 gone.
We're building a house.
We've now got a child on the way.
I'm up early in the morning.
I'm out in the fresh air loving life.
KEVIN LAUGHS
I do like it.