Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 2, Episode 1 - The Regency Villa, Farnham, Surrey - full transcript

I'm never ever going to do this again,
I've decided. It's just not worth it.

It's not worth the
anxiety, it's not worth

the time it's taking me
away from my children.

It's just not... I just can't see it's
worth it. It can never be worth it.

It's only a thing. It's just
a house, it's just bricks.

This week's story
is of one woman's

determination to build
the house of her dreams,

which happens
to be an enormous Georgian mansion.

But more than that, she's a woman who won't
accept anything less than perfection.

When did you find this plot of land?

We found it five years ago
through a mutual friend.



- Really? That's how you found it?
- Yep.

It's rather an unusual
route, by word of mouth.

Well, we happened to have this idea,
"Let's build our own house."

And I happened to
mention it to a friend and it

came back to me as this
plot of land in Farnham.

But now, Mark, I
mean, that's five years

ago. What happened in
the intervening period?

Good question.

Well, we've had three
sets of architects and a lot

of work's gone into getting
exactly what we want.

- And this is the house?
- This is the house.

So we are... We're there.

- Outside the front door.
- That's right.

I always dreamt of having a Georgian house
since I was quite young.



I'd dream of a dream house,
and this basically, hopefully, will be it.

So how much is all this going to cost?

Good question. A lot
more than we anticipated.

Probably three times what we anticipated.

What did you anticipate?

The initial budget that we gave
to the first architect was £275,000.

So it's now costing nearly £900,000?

Well, it's about £830,000 at the moment.

We have tried hard to keep the costs down,

but to be quite
honest, to us it's just too

important to get the
historical detail right

and to start cutting
too many costs would...

It's the price you pay
for perfection, isn't it?

Exactly.

- So you're paying for it.
- Yeah.

- You're busy running your business?
- Correct.

And I'm, yes, exactly,
running up the bills.

So much has gone into this
that, unless barring some unknown disaster,

things should go according to plan.

Well, you know, famous
last words, ha ha ha.

The house is vast with no Tess
than five reception rooms downstairs.

It's designed to look like a Regency villa
from the 1820s

complete with a garage
with guest rooms above

in the style of a coach
house to one side.

Inside, a light and airy hallway leads
straight through to a formal dining room

with ceiling-to-floor bow windows.

They're going for a more
relaxed family feel in the kitchen,

but beyond that we're
plunged back to a

classical, late Georgian
style with an orangery.

To you and me, that's a posh conservatory.

This design is all about splendid elegance.

At its centre is a
sweeping staircase leading

up to the four bedrooms
on the first floor.

The elevations that face the garden
are even grander.

Here, a terrace with stone balustrades
leads lo a classically landscaped garden.

The plot cost £275,000,
the build budget is £830,000,

and most of the money is coming
in the form of a mortgage.

There's so many details
that the costs could just escalate.

I wanted to try and pin the costs down.

I felt all along, my gut instinct all along
was to have a bill of quantities.

And this is a list.

- It's a list.
- It's a list.

It's a big, huge shopping list
of every single nut, bolt, screw, slate.

Pre-cast concrete pad stones,
go to fascia boards.

It goes on. It goes on.

Does it include the interiors?
Yes, wall finishes, everything.

Everything. Tiles, everything.

There's a water treatment plant,
boilers, gardener's WC.

And it's got the maker's specification
for the three-tap-hole, wash hand basin.

That's for Mr Lush the gardener.

Your gardener will be so happy.

How are you going to finance it?
Have you got...?

Oh, don't.

We're borrowing, in order to meet
some of the cash flow problems, £750,000,

though we should pay some of that. I know.

That's a lot of money.

We should be able to
pay some of that back.

But it is a cash flow problem because the
mortgage company won't release any money

until we're at first floor level.

You've only got a contingency of what?

£15,000.

If your contingency has to go up
to £50,000, for whatever reason,

you may not have that cash at the end?

Well, once we're out of foundations,
once we're out of the footings,

then I will feel fairly confident
we won't be using that.

I'm confident we won't...
we won't use the contingency.

Very easy to say that
before you've even started digging.

Helen and Mark first
started dreaming of living

in a period house as
newlyweds in Richmond.

They were both drawn to big, Georgian piles
that would cost millions to buy.

But when Mark's work
meant they had to move out to Surrey

and they found a plot on which
they could build a brand-new house,

they saw a chance to realise their dream.

I think Helen's very courageous.

She's moving in as an outsider
into this very posh residential area.

She's building on
a plot of land which

hasn't been developed
in all of its 7O years

and she's building in
quite a different style.

Round here, the standard architectural look

is a kind of "oh, so comfortable,
English, fake rustic" style,

whereas what she's building is a bit
more of a mini stately home, much grander.

This is very stockbroker belt round here.

I think the locals are
going to be very surprised.

The first big shock for the neighbours
comes with the first big job on the build -

laying the foundations.

These are five fool deep and it'll lake
42 lorryloads lo fill all these trenches.

There's enough going in
to build a motorway flyover.

What's more, they all
have to come on the same

day so the concrete
dries at the same time.

It goes well. And after all those years
of meticulous planning,

Helen's grand project
gets off to an encouraging start.

Wow!

Well, this is really exciting, I must say.

It's been a very long
time. I can't believe it.

I wake up and think,
"Oh, my God, the house, what's happening?"

And then I remember
and it's like Christmas Day.

It's like it's like wow, wow,
the building, it's happening.

So, my only concern at this moment
is the size of it.

It is looking a bit on the small side.

But the builders and David assure me
that it's gonna be a big house.

Work may only just be starting on site,

but Helen's been planning her
finishing touches for the last five years

in the cottage they're renting nearby.

This is a chandelier. It's about 1820,
so it's right for the period. It's Swedish.

We got it at auction.

It's rather beautiful
and elegant, isn't it?

- It's stunning.
- So it's the right period for the house?

- Yeah, yeah.
- And where did you buy it?

We bought it at auction.

At er... At Sotheby's. There's a label.

You've got no house to put it in.
It's sitting in your garage.

Our mantra the time we've been together is,

"Isn't that wonderful?
Isn't that gorgeous? Isn't that fantastic?"

Then it's a case of,
"We haven't got the

house. Let's wait till
we've got the house."

Every now and then we just get tired
of seeing beautiful things pass us by

and not having a house,
so we thought, "Let's go for it."

Buy the beautiful things and then
worry about the house to put them in?

It's just something you just
don't come across very often.

Helen's also spent five years selecting
her perfect team to build her dream house.

Jim Garland, the
architect is from a local firm

who specialise in
conservation architecture,

and her building
contractor is David Heyhoe.

These men have the challenge
of living up lo Helen's exacting standards.

The vision may be of
classical grandeur, but

the structure of this
building is bog standard.

This Regency villa is being constructed
out of concrete breeze blocks and cement.

Look, don't you think this is exciting?

Now, Helen may have planned this project
to perfection on paper,

but once on site she has to
deal with forces she can? control.

Right, well, it's May
now and it's still raining.

It's been continuously
raining the whole of April.

I think April was the
wettest April in history.

I don't know
how much the rain's set David back at all.

I think the main problem has been drainage.

We originally had a system designed
to run down the side of the house

which was using these leech fields,

but they produce an effluent
that was very nitrogen-rich

and the planners were concerned
that it was going to kill these trees off.

Our only argument to them is like,
"You've had the plans since last September.

Why has it taken you
this long to son it out

and come back and say
this isn't appropriate?"

So eventually Jim had to come up
with a new system,

which is over here - the bio digester.

And that actually produces something
that's very clean.

Apparently it's clean
enough to drink, just about.

All in all, I think we're running about
two weeks behind schedule at the moment.

And I'm sure David will make it up.

But once the weather clears and the walls
start going up, they hit another setback.

In order lo build the walls up
beyond the ground floor,

they need to put
concrete lintels above each

window to take the
weight of the next floor.

But, there's not a time! to be seen here.

I cannot believe that
this whole project is being

held up over something
as simple as lintels.

We should have lintel details over all
the openings and they're all still awaited

and at this precise
moment in time I couldn't tell

anybody what any one
lintel is on the project.

The blockwork has got as high as it can go
without the lintels.

The build is at a standstill
and David has sent

everyone home for a
week at a cost of £5,000.

At this stage,
if I went to our original programme,

we should have been
putting the roof structure

on, so if you sort of look
at it in in those terms,

you'll get the overall
impression that we are

somewhat falling short
of client expectations.

So you can't be happy?

I've never been so far behind
in such a short time due to so few reasons.

Helen told me that that the lintels
have been a problem.

They've sort of prevented
work from proceeding.

Well, what's happened
is we've got quite tight cost controls

and we had to look
at the options on the

lintels slightly later
than we'd have preferred.

But for a client, "slightly delayed"
is a question of writing cheques, isn't it,

because they have to keep
the building company in the background?

We've now got a good
three, four weeks where it's

straightforward building,
putting the roof on...

And you don't foresee any problems

as you've had with the lintels
with the rest of that construction?

- No.
- That's all straightforward.

It should be. Come back
in four weeks, but er...

- But it should be straightforward?
- Yeah. Yeah.

With all the delays and
spiralling costs I want

to know how Mark, the
breadwinner, is feeling.

By most people's standards,
this is a very expensive house and area.

It's a kind of huge dream.

The thought, you know, enters my head,
"Oh, plenty of money to splash around,"

but actually you're
saying you've got finite

resources and you've
got a big mortgage?

Well, initially the whole plan
was based upon costs

that were given to us which were a lot less
than what they finally ended up as.

And even then they're going above those, so
we've been stretched to the extreme limits.

Which means that affects detailing and I'll
be designing cardboard boxes to sit on.

Everybody's intentions are to create
this most fantastic house for me.

But it has to be within budget, which
are failing, and it has to be on time.

That is a professional responsibility
to me, as a client. That's all I ask.

All I ask if that people do their
job, full stop. I don't ask for blood.

Not yet, anyway.

At the end of the day, I'm going to hate it
if I look back in a few years time...

OK, it'll be a fantastic house,
I'm sat in and my children are grown up.

You know,
where have I been in the past two years?

On the telephone, chasing people around
and fretting and worrying.

The classic example was on Friday.
Tom comes back from school on his last day.

I didn't get back till eight cos I was
talking to the surveyor and the builder.

Obviously there was a lot on my mind
and I wanted to talk to Mark about it,

and Tom is trying to sit there and say,
"Look at my books, look at my books,"

and I'm going, "In a minute,
darling. In a minute, darling."

Of course, when I had a minute,
the moment had gone and I hate that.

I hate not being there for them.

It's July, four months into the build
and at last the lintels are arriving.

They're nearly two months
behind schedule and

finally the site is
becoming a hive of activity.

Everyone is pushing
to make up for lost time.

The precast concrete beams for the floors
go in quickly.

They take just one day, though I must admit
it's strange seeing car park technology

being used lo build a Regency villa.

It then takes less than two weeks
for the walls to go up to roof level.

Everything seems to be moving forward
on the build,

but Helen's invited me
down to see a Regency

house that's for sate
mites away in Somerset.

Why?

At last.

At last a real house, a real Regency house,
as well. It's beautiful. It really is.

Why? Why have we come 100 miles
to look at a Regency house?

I think...
We go through our really bleak moments.

We start looking at other houses.

I don't know, it just sort of helps us, it
just kind of keeps that end goal in sight.

This is what it's going to be like,
hopefully, one day.

And I saw this house and it reminded me
what we're trying to do with a double bay.

Is this what you're going to go for?

Originally this is what I set out in mind.

Then somehow we had this sort of
neo-classicism developed within it

and it's become a little bit more grander.

We've gone a bit more upmarket, you know.

Nice room, isn't it?

- It's absolutely lovely.
- Beautiful colour. Very light.

Yeah, absolutely.

- This is the bay window, isn't it?
- Yes.

This is the bay window
as in the photograph.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

And how's it going? How is the bay window?
I mean, is it in? ls the glazing in?

No, we've had lots and lots
and lots and lots of problems.

When you were last down, you saw
the problem we had with the lintels.

The fact was we had delays in the project

because information
wasn't getting through to

the builder and basically
that was continuing.

Information wasn't being passed to me.

And then I think what really just was
the last straw was the window arrived.

And this window arrived and it was...

- This is a sample window?
- Sample window.

I just looked at it. I'm
not a joiner and I'm

not, you know, an
architectural historian,

but I just looked at it and my gut instinct
was all wrong. It was just wrong.

The glazing bar detail was wrong.

The sill detail was wrong.

I was like, "This isn't lamb's tongue."

- That kind of thing, that sort...
- That's what I wanted.

That deep, long protrusion,
very elegant, thin.

Exactly. It wasn't right. It's there
now as a model of what we don't want.

Right. So where is Jim?
Where are the architects in all of this?

Well, the architects have resigned.

- Or you've asked them to resign?
- No, they resigned. They resigned.

[Giving the reason that]?

The reason being
was because, as I mentioned earlier,

I was asking increasingly
more detailed questions

and I was not getting satisfactory answers,

so I asked them to put
their personal indemnity insurer on notice

because I intend to
purse a claim against them.

Oh, right, OK. So you're
giving them warning.

- Yes.
- So you warned them?

I warned them that's
what I intended to do.

Then they resigned?

Which, you know, they're
perfectly within their right to do that.

How on earth will you
get this building finished?

I'll do it myself, Kevin.

So six months into her dream project,
Helen's taking up the supreme challenge.

She's going it atone without an architect.

And today she faces her first major test.

The roof trusses are arriving.

The thing at the moment is everything is
tempered by the stress of what's going on,

so I'm just walking around with a
complete knot in my stomach all the time.

I alternate between
despair and like excitement

and despair again,
then excitement, but...

The roof trusses actually
go on without a hitch,

but the project's finances
are in serious trouble.

Yesterday we had a meeting and at
long last we've got the figures together,

so at the moment all these figures
have to be analysed.

David is trying to get a handle
on what things are going to cost

and take all the extras into account.

That figures come in at £140,000 above and
over our contract sum, which is nearly 20%,

which is absolutely crazy.

I can't really describe to anybody
what myself and Mark feel like.

It's desperate. Desperate.

Very, very desperate to the extent
that we were talking last night

that if we can't put a lid on the costs
here and now,

we're going to have to sell the house
at the end of the project.

I'm having to cut,
cut, cut, cut the whole

time, compromises forced
on me the whole time.

And I cannot tell you,
I cannot even begin to tell you how I feel.

And, yes, it's not a dream house any more,
it is a nightmare house.

Because it's like...
It's a haemorrhaging house, basically.

It's October,
and according to the original schedule,

Helen's house should be nearly finished.

So I've come down to see how
far they've actually got.

So what brings you down here, then?

I'm off to visit a house
which is being built on that estate.

Someone must have some money.

I think they're borrowing a lot of money
is the answer.

Is that that new place
up on the end, is it?

That's the one, yeah, yeah.

I heard Robbie Williams is moving in.

Robbie Williams?

I heard a little rumour down the pub. Yeah.

Well, not unless the owners have sold it.

Thank you very much.

Well, good Lord, it actually
looks like a little Georgian rectory.

I say Georgian rectory. Of course,
this thing's made out of breeze blocks,

so it's a bit bit early to say, really.

But look at it. The walls
are up, the roof's on.

They're building chimneys
and there are people here.

Which is a marked contrast
to when I was last here.

Are you in a better frame of mind
than when I saw you last?

No.

I'm up and down the whole time.

Are you? But isn't that you?

Well, probably, yeah.

But are you more excited about the build?

I mean, I turned up this morning
and it's, you know, it's a house.

What you see is quite superficial.
I know what goes on behind...

This is a façade to
the house and I know

what's going on behind
the scenes to get there.

I must admit, when I'm
here, it's quite soothing.

I just get involved in what's going on.
I can see what's happening.

And I go home and then I crack up and sob.

- About?
- Well, basically, the finances, I guess.

Is that the one thing that kind of...?

Well, yeah, it's...

We are well, well and truly over budget.
We're very delayed.

How much over budget are you?

Projected to the end of the project -

David is trying to take
into account of all sorts

of other things that have
come up subsequently-

we're probably looking at about £140,000.

I wasn't laughing a few weeks ago.

- You could build a house for £140,000.
- I know you could.

- A really nice house for 140 grand.
- I know. You could do a lot with it.

But it's not so much that.
It's like, "Where are we going to find it?"

You've already got
a whacking, great mortgage, haven't you?

I know. I know. I know. I know.

How much are you borrowing?
Three-quarters of a mill, or something?

It will be. Yeah.

What's the repayment on a mortgage
of three-quarters of a million pounds?

Too much.

They need to get the house watertight
before winter.

That means battening and felting
the huge expanse of roof.

It also means getting in
Helen's precious windows.

So this is one of the new windows
that's going to go in, yeah?

Yes.

Entirely different from the one that I saw
propped up against the shed earlier.

This is what I wanted
and this is hard wood as well.

OK. And really nice
thin glazing bar sections.

These are 16 millimetres.

And this is exactly
what you wanted?

Oh, yeah, look at
that. That is just wafer.

What's the cost of your windows, then?

Well, originally they were going
to be about £50,000 and erm...

How many windows?

I don't know. About
40-odd windows if you count

them. There's a lot of
windows in the house.

And then there's French windows, which you
can see here. They're big French windows.

So I think these are going to work out
slightly more, but not that much more.

- Not that much more.
- And this is down to you?

I obviously got together with the joiner
whose company made them,

but they knew what I wanted.

Getting this right
must be kind of quite a

fillip for you. It must
have been a real spur?

Yeah, yeah. Well,
the thing is there are

certain things I can
let go of quality-wise,

but certain things are really important.

The windows were one
of the most important

features of the house.
I had to get them right.

Standing on the roof, of course,
leads me to believe

that the house is son
of nearing completion.

I wouldn't say nearing completion,
but we're progressing

at a much better rate than we were.

I think it's fair to say
that we probably all feel

a bit more optimistic that
we're going to get there.

You've got chimneys built and stuff
and the roof is felted.

Yeah, yeah, we're pretty
well waterproofed now.

But you need to be, really,
cos it's nearly winter.

It will be very nice to get indoors.

We've had to plug a lot of gaps
in a very short time

to sort of bring it round from a job
which was going nowhere

to a job which is, I'd like to think,
is now going somewhere.

Exterior work on the main house
may be coming to an end,

but the build is now ten
weeks behind schedule.

You guys, are you looking
forward to moving in?

- Yes.
- Kind of.

It's took about
three-quarters of my life to

actually... about half of
my life to actually design

and a quarter of my life
to actually start being built.

So it would be rather nice to spend some
of your life living in it, wouldn't it?

Last time we stood
roughly in this position,

it was on the floor
below in the cellar,

before this was built,
and you said to me, "It's only a house."

- It is only a house.
- It's become a bit more, hasn't it?

Erm... no, it's still only a house.

All-consuming passion,
a nightmare, a kind of...

Oh, not so much for me. I mean,
I just let Helen get on with it so...

You have work to go to, of course.

Yes, yes, I bury myself in that,
so I don't think about the house much.

And how are you, in relation to the build?

What's your position there?
Are you standing back from it?

Yeah, I'm like Jeeves, really.

I just make sure her life
is bearable because it is,

you know, the last two nights
she's been up till 4:30 in the morning,

working on plans and so on and
then having to get up for site meetings.

So it's more than a full time job for her
at present,

but she's coping very
well, and I'm just in

the background, really,
trying to give support.

Plugging away.

But I don't really know the detail
like she does, so... it's difficult.

The financial side,
though, is a bit hairy, isn't it?

Cos it's cost more, it's gone on more,
ten weeks or so over.

Yes. Yeah. We'll end up with a
bigger mortgage than we anticipated.

And it's a big mortgage, anyway, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Yeah, it is, it's large.

Yeah. Well, that's all right. As long
as you're happy, I'm happy, you know.

Well, at the end of the day,
it's going to be a magnificent place.

They talk of location, location, location.

This has got that and it's spectacular,

so if the worst came
to the worst, you know,

as I said before, we
could always sell it.

Yeah, but could you sell
it to recover your costs?

I don't know, but at the end of the day,
if we didn't, life still goes on.

We could still buy a nice place to live in.
We're lucky.

I've never lived in a
house this large so...

I've been in hotels, but...
You know, I'm not bothered.

All the walls are now bum,

but, of course, Helen
isn't planning on leaving

all those crude and ugly
cement blocks exposed.

The whole building is going
to get a cement overcoat of render.

Indeed, many Georgian
and Regency houses

were rendered often
to hide dodgy brickwork.

Grander buildings got grander render,

often scraped with lines
to resemble dressed stone,

or even shaped into chunky rusticated
blocks to look like Renaissance palaces.

The Christmas cake icing of the Brighton
Pavilion is an extraordinary example

of the Regency renderer's art.

It is render gone mad.

Helen had hoped
to use an authentic, period, lime render,

but not for the first time
her dream is being compromised.

I thought I was having this
traditional lime render and David said,

"Well, it isn't. It hasn't
been specified like that."

There's been confusion between myself
and David as to the kind of render.

As it is, because of... It's just best to
leave it as the architect's specification,

in case there are problems in the future.

How many coats, Helen?

- Three.
- Altogether, three.

We're hoping to get it
all done by next Friday.

That's the hope, but it
depends on the weather.

And the chimneys?

- The chimneys are done.
- We can look at those.

- There's just the main bit there.
- I'd like to see.

Are they...
Are they the only thing that's finished?

- What do you mean, finished?
- Well, it's finished.

Well, no, they've still got to be painted.

And we've got a problem
cos we can't paint them

now till the spring
cos it's too wet to paint.

Oh, no, let's go and see them cos,
you know, it's one thing that is done.

You know what I mean, concluded?

And, of course,
Helen is so passionate about every detail

that she's even created a special design
for the tops of her chimneys

that stand 40 feet above the ground.

They've finished these chimneys completely,
haven't they?

It's a joy to see. This is the moulding?

This is my chimney capping.

- Great to see and this is in stone?
- Reconstituted.

Reconstituted.
It's cast. Reconstituted stone, yeah?

- Are you pleased with it?
- I'm very pleased.

I'm very pleased with the colour.

I spent a long time, holding bits of
stone up against people's houses.

- What are you going to paint it with?
- I'm going to paint it in a stone colour.

Very sort of, I suppose, dirty.
Well, like this. Similar.

Lime wash?

Well, once I get my head around exactly
what my render is,

then I will make a selection based on that.

In the meantime this
has to go off, hasn't it?

That's right.

Presumably, this is why they've
put plastic up at the moment to...

- To protect it.
- ..just protect it from the weather.

And how long it is then
before you can paint it?

Well, David tells me now we're going
to have to leave it till spring

because the paint won't
won't dry or stay on.

- Is this Welsh slate?
- No, it's not Welsh slate, no.

- What is it?
- I think it's Chinese slate.

- It comes all the way from China?
- Yes.

How much is it?

I think these were about 87p a slate.

- That's cheap.
- Yeah, it is.

Compared to the price of Welsh slate,
which is...?

To be quite honest, I don't know. I've got
this figure of about £4 a slate in my head,

but I think it's probably about £2.

I don't know. I just know it's a lot more.

But are you happy with the quality of it?

I'm very happy. When
I originally sourced this,

they didn't have a
British standard to it,

- but they have done that now.
- Oh, really?

It has a bad reputation, foreign slate.

Spanish slate, people say it crumbles,
it doesn't last so long blah blah blah.

But this apparently has now had
the British standard applied to it,

so, in my opinion, it's
just as good as Welsh.

It seems to me that the
build is progressing now.

It's really moving forward,
things are starting to really happen.

Where are you going to be, say,
in a month's time at Christmas?

What stage will the build be at?

I guess the roof will be finished by then.

The renderers will have been finished.

We'll be on more internals.

Windows in?

Yeah, they should be glazing
in the next couple of weeks.

- Really?
- So they should be coming in, yeah.

By Christmas it should be watertight.

Fairly watertight, yeah, yeah.

Mark also told me that you were working
till four, four-thirty every morning.

Not quite every morning, but most.

Some nights I work though the night
till about six.

And sometimes I just I might go to bed
about two.

- What are you doing?
- What am I doing?

For example, between September
and probably about two weeks ago,

I was on here three
days a week full-time, the

other two days I was
out looking for things.

I had to go up to London to look for
some ironmongery, had to check details out.

That leaves me no
time at all then. I then

have to come home and
try and consolidate that.

Also just keep on top
of our general finances,

you know, just running a home and children
and sorting things through,

and it just takes me through the night.

I also find it easier cos there's no
phone calls, no school runs to worry about,

no having to tidy away all my
papers and things, I can just sit there.

I can start about 10:00pm and I can work
through till 4:00am. Six pure hours.

How are you doing on the drawings,
things like profiles, shapes and templates?

How does that happen?
Do you sit there and do it yourself?

I copy everything. I'm not original.
I know what I want. I go through books...

You're not the first
person to do that.

No, no. I go through
books, I copy things.

I sort of sketch things out for David.
I show him things.

Between my books,
me and these people who know their jobs,

then I know I'm getting what I want.

It's November, and after seven months,

at last some of the Regency features
are appearing on Helen and Mark's home,

but there's still a long way to go.

So you're not happy, then?

Well, it needs to be finished off
and sorted out and dusted down.

It is poured concrete, let's not forget.

I thought it was reconstituted stone.

I think that's a posh word for
poured concrete, isn't it, in a mould?

I don't know. I mean,
to me it looks as

though it could be, you
know, 250 years old.

After all, that's what you want?

Yeah, yeah, well, we'll
see, won't we? We'll see.

And inside... Actually, the inside looks
remarkably similar to when I was last here.

Well, that's because
they've been doing first fix electrics.

So in fact it is remarkably similar.
Nothing's changed much?

No, but we've been doing electrics.
They've been putting in window frames.

Ah, yes. Glass in the windows?

- Glass is coming on.
- OK.

Wow, you've got
your very own glazing factory here.

Look. Look at him go.

Watch that putty go in.

It's like watching somebody ice a cake.
It's fantastic.

This is for where, this window?

This is going to be a dining room.

- Yeah?
- Upstairs, yeah.

Curved window.

- Not curved glass as well, is it?
- Yes, it is.

And the glass just pops into the putty
just like that? Beautiful.

This is the sort of glass
English Heritage use

in their windows because
it has imperfections,

so it's not bland, it's not flat,
it doesn't look blank in the window.

So when the light reflects on it,

all the clouds will scud across
and you'll see everything will move.

What's your passion? Why are
you so enthusiastic about this glass?

Because when you hold it up like this
and you look along it,

- you can see all these little movements.
- Oh, all the ripples.

- And that's...
- And the reflections.

Yeah. If you walk past a modern window,
it's bland, it's black. Nothing there.

You walk past one of
these. It's divided into 12

panes. All of them
reflect back at different...

Some will have bits of sky,
some will have something else.

As you move, the
whole thing is living, it's

live, and it just looks
absolutely beautiful.

They kind of wink at
you. They're alive. They're

like eyes with all these
different colours in them.

In a way, modern float
glass just doesn't do it?

No. No. In itself, despite everything else,
it's just beautiful.

I just love it, anyway, full stop.

And how much does this cost?

The three mil glass costs
about £55 a square metre.

What? A square metre?

And if you toughen or laminate it,
it's about £150.

Hey! So a square metre of this is £150.

So this must be £25 worth or something.
Something like that.

- Probably.
- This piece of laminated glass.

Then of course it
costs more to get it cut.

To get it cut as well.

We've got over 50 windows in this house.

And God knows how many French windows
at the back. Seven French windows.

This is a proper way
to hang your windows, isn't it?

You know, brass pulleys,
sash boxes, sash weights.

That's right.

None of this sort of friction-held nonsense
that modern sash windows have.

They ought to be very easy to open.
Must be very smooth.

I was saying earlier I've never ever opened
a window.

In my experience, sash windows
are things you kind of wriggle up.

Is that one done? Can we open it?

Yes, it is,
but it's probably distressingly too easy.

- Is it?
- Yeah.

Oh!

It goes by itself! Isn't that fantastic?

And everything else is
kind of all going to plan?

Can you see the end? I mean,
can you yet see where it's all going?

No. Can you?

Look at it.

It's now the middle of February and
on the original schedule this is the point

at which the whole house,
everything, would have been finished.

Of course, it's nowhere near finished,
but Helen and Mark do have a building.

A very... big building.

It may be big, but it is broken up
with detail and a clever mix of materials.

I think the central bow and the
orangery at the back really work well.

And Helen's obsession with period accuracy
has produced delicate detailing

you can? find
in your usual Georgian repro home.

My one doubt is that the roof
seems just a little too wide and too low.

Inside it's still hard to tell,
although the building has now got rooms.

Helen's been dreaming of her interiors
for six years.

She may not have any money left to complete
them according to her plans,

but if there's one
thing I've learnt about

Helen, she's not a woman
to let go of her dreams.

Of course, the thing is that you

and only you, Helen, knows every
single detail in the building, don't you?

Yes. It's all in my head. It's all here.

Now, this room is...?

- This is the study.
- This is your study.

This is my study. This is my study.

And this to me, probably,
is going to be my high Regency room,

and it's going to epitomise
very much my personality.

And these are your colours here,
these great big red panels?

I'll probably get about
50 different colour shades.

A bit like lipstick, I'll mix it up myself
to get the colour I want.

I'm not sure about
this colour. I feel

maybe it's probably
a little bit too... pink.

I want something a bit more blood red,
a bit more drama to it.

This is just, to me...
We saw this at auction.

This is beautiful. This is original.
It's very Regency.

Very, very, very Regency. To me, it
epitomises everything about Regency.

The sort of black, and the feet,
and the gold and the eagles.

- When did you buy it?
- About 15 months ago.

Really?

Well, we thought
the project was starting.

And we just sort of let rip.

It was like, "The house
is going to be starting

in March. This is
fantastic, let's buy it."

And we got it at a very good price.

The floor is going to be American.
It's going to be oak, American oak.

American oak. Cos American
oak can look very bland, can't it?

But this has got a lot of figure in it.

Well, I went along myself personally
and looked at all the woods.

I spent days... I went around all the
saw mills in the southwest of England,

looking at various bits
of wood and I chose

this one because it did
have a nice grain to it.

I'm going to be naughty and I'm going
to stain it to make it look like it's old.

I'm not just going to
leave and just wax it up.

This is your sitting room?

This is our sitting room.

So what colour is it going to be?

It's going to be a son
of turquoise, yeah, and

powder pink theme to
this one, in this room.

We're going to have a big antique...

Well, it's not antique. It's a Regency
antique fireplace that's been restored.

That will go there.

We'll have three settees,
very traditionally sort of sat around it.

- No television in this room.
- No TV?

No, no, no.

I want a room where we can come
and sit and listen to music,

and play Scrabble and things like that.

Then I'll have a sofa
table at the back there.

- Like a proper old-fashioned family.
- Yeah, that's right.

You haven't got a massive budget.

I haven't got any
budget. It's gone. No, no.

This room will rest
empty. This room will rest

empty and gradually
we'll, you know, son it out.

So through here, these double doors,
into the dining room.

Yes.

And another set of double
doors into the garden.

Are you going to hang the chandelier here?

- Yes, and it's got a...
- Over the dining table?

That's got a cobalt blue bottom,
if you remember,

and that will be right over the centre
and come down quite low.

Fantastic.

This is what I call my secret door because
it's going to be flush flush on this side,

so in the dining room you don't see it.

Oh, really?

Nice, big kitchen, Helen. It's massive.

This is the same size as the sitting room,

and along the back
here I've got a big Alpha,

which looks like an Aga
kind of cooker, in black.

Yeah. Big range.

In front of that,
I've got a huge, big

island, which is like
the main work surface.

You keep using the word "huge".

Well, I like big kitchens.
I've spent my whole life

in small kitchens and I
wanted a big, big kitchen

with lots and lots of space
cos I'm a very messy worker.

- You have thought about every detail.
- Of course I have.

I've lived with this kitchen for six years.

Now, this orangery is the
least finished room, isn't it?

Yes, we've had a lot of problems.

It's the one
that I have the most difficulty imagining.

Well, I don't. This is going
to be my absolute piéce de résistance.

It's going to be oval.

It's got these amazing
arches that go all the

way around it so it
creates a colonnaded effect.

And on the back here,
we're going to have antique mirror glass.

It will be this stuff here. which you
can see is just absolutely gorgeous.

Oh, yeah. Antiqued, speckled.

It's not bright, bright,
bright, modern silver.

It's got a silvery, smoky grey to it.

And above, what's happening?

We've got a big, big, glass lantern
that takes up quite a large area here,

so it's going to be
completely suffused of light.

Helen's built a house
on the scale of her imagination.

It has six rooms downstairs
and four double bedrooms upstairs,

not counting the four guest rooms
over the garage.

And her dreams for the inside
are as extravagant and ambitious.

This this is my bedroom, our bedroom.

That was a slip, wasn't it?

But already it's become my favourite room.

There's just something about the windows,
the glass, the shape, the light.

And are you hanging this on your walls?

One day when we can
afford it, we'll have this.

This is not printed wallpaper, is it?

No, it's silk.
It's hand-painted silk backed on to paper.

- I saw this in a book six years ago.
- Beautiful.

And I fell passionately in love with it,

and to this day I will hold out
to the bitter end to get this wallpaper.

But not cheap at all. I mean,
how much to do your entire room in this?

Well, I had a quote for about £5,000.

So, in the short term,
we're just going to have to paint it green.

And in the middle here
we're going to have my bed, our bed.

What's that going to be like?

That's going to
be... It's going to be a

sort of Venetian, sort
of, chinoiserie style.

Venetian chinoiserie.

With great, big, curly
posts, not four-poster.

- How big is it?
- You can get any size you want.

But I want us to have
a seven-foot-wide bed.

Whoa!

So we can all pile in on Saturday morning
and just sit and chat and read the papers

and there's room for everybody.

How does Mark feel?
Is he happy to go with that?

Mark doesn't like that bed.

But again that's
horrendously expensive and in

the short term we won't
be able to afford that.

No, well, no doubt he'll exercise his taste
in due course and persuade...

I'll persuade him. I will persuade him.
I will persuade him.

- Are you having all this linen?
- Yes, I want plain white linen.

This stuff down here. Fantastic.

All antiqued and white
and crisp and... Regency.

So, no expense is
spared in this room, really.

Well, this is what I said
we will have one day.

And is this the cornice for the ceiling?

Yes, this is my...

Little sort of Gothic...
Chinese Gothic pattern.

- Which way around does it go?
- I think it's that way around.

That way, yes, and I want...

I just adore this, this ogee arch.

I'm going to try and emulate that
in the corners there,

but I think we're going to have
problems building it.

But, if I'm here, looking
through that doorway,

is that your bathroom
and dressing room?

That's right.

And I designed this as such that we
could look down and see the fireplace

because there's no room in this oval room
for a fireplace, but I wanted a fireplace.

I love fireplaces and I think
they're synonymous with the period.

So it draws you into into the room as well.

So where's the bath and the shower
and all the rest of it?

Well, this is where Mark
had a complete creative spun

and he said to me what
you should do in this

room is put the bath
right in the middle.

So you look over the bath to the fireplace?

And it's a complete
extravagant use of space.

We decided we didn't
need five bedrooms.

So let's make this
into one big, huge, bathroom for ourselves.

So just a big, white,
traditional, roll-top bath?

This is a big, yeah, massive, great big...

- Chrome, nickel, gold-plated tap?
- No, no, no.

Yes, it's big, French
taps and big, big, big,

gold feet, massive
great big, huge, gold feet.

So not at all ostentatious or show-off
in any way?

- No, it's big enough for both of us.
- Yeah.

And then these are what
here, these rooms off?

This is the walk-in wardrobe.

- OK. Can I walk in?
- You may.

The problem is I've
got to share it with Mark.

I tell you, you can get a lot of clothes in
here. It's enormous for a walk-in wardrobe.

Again, I didn't want
to waste space. It's for

both of us. Mark's got
more clothes than me.

This is a shower,
so you walk in here through the first arch.

It's enormous.

Inside is a second arch which is smaller,
so it takes the frame round the first.

This is a shower? It's vast.

I've got some Persian type tiles,
very, very oriental, to go down the back.

Whoa!

And has Mark had much input
into the interior design schemes?

No.

Er... Mark... No.

What happens is I go and choose things,
I hunt things down,

and I say to Mark,
"What do you think?" If he

says no, that's fine,
I'll find some more stuff.

But everything goes by him
and, generally speaking, we're lucky.

We do have such similar tastes.

What are you looking forward
to about the place,

now that you can see a real building
with rooms and so on?

It's being in a place that's large
with fantastic large gardens.

I don't think we'll believe it.
It'll be like being born again.

It'll be absolutely fantastic.

And the thought of the children
being able to run around the garden.

As a businessman, what would your advice be

to someone who was going to try
and build something like this?

Visit a psychiatrist.

I think it's er... Don't.

It really has been a very
difficult time for us both.

Certainly, it is not something
we'd want to do again.

Are you going to be able to forget
those experiences and enjoy the house?

Erm...'I'll put them to the back of my mind
as soon as possible.

Forget's a different issue,
but certainly back of the mind.

So to get where you've got to now, how
much have you had to sacrifice financially?

Everything.

- You've got a huge mortgage, haven't you?
- A huge mortgage.

And in terms of the
budget and the elements

that you've had to give
up, what's had to go?

Well, the landscape had to go straight off.

- How much was that worth?
- That was about £80,000. And...

Nothing you can't
son out with a JCB.

No, Mark's going to
do it himself, he's told me.

- Fantastic what a great project.
- Yeah.

What else have you had to give up?

Well, we just had to give up
our financial security basically.

We've got to raise at least anywhere
between £120,000 and £150,000, if not more.

What, that you still haven't got?

Yeah.

We're having to go back to the
building society and ask for more money.

And it's, you know, it's... disturbing.

The one positive side
of this is, at least, I

didn't gamble the money
away on a roulette table.

This is an asset and it can be sold.

So how much do you think you'll
be able to sell it for... if you had to?

If I had to sell this,
tidy up the garden blah

blah blah, about 1.8
million, I would hope.

When I first started it was a dream house,

and I was just so
excited and I was running

around, you know,
picking paints and things.

Then when all the problems started,
you had to get your business head on.

This is a problem. This is something
that's got to be sorted out and rein it in.

I came home one day
and I was absolutely gutted.

I'd been up all night, crying.
I'd been worrying myself silly about money.

And I came home
and I saw the children playing.

From that moment, it was like a weight
had been lifted off my shoulders.

I realised it just doesn't matter.

That's the one thing
I've learnt this past year.

It's a perspective on
what is important in life.

At the end of the day, home is
where myself, Mark and the children are.

Not this. This is a house
and it will always be a house.

So you really have changed.

Yeah, but it's very liberating as well.

It's a wonderful feeling
to be able to say to you,

"I could sell this tomorrow
and not bat an eyelid."

That is just a wonderful feeling
not to be weighed down by your possessions.

And, you know, I think it's a
lucky lesson to have learnt, really.

For someone who's
never built anything before,

and who ended up
running this vast project single-handedly,

Helen's pulled it off far more successfully
than I ever thought she would.

But what her commitment
and her enthusiasm have proved

is that you can build a
really ambitious dream,

but only if you're prepared to sacrifice
almost every other pan of your life.

And that's something
she's learnt the hard way.