After the sixty-length swim at the old school last night, I settled down to watch one of my favourite programmes: Grand Designs. It featured a youngish couple with two young boys who were building their own house in Monmouthshire.
The first few minutes of the programme showed them in fancy dress, attending a party at Warwick Castle.
Like a lot of grand designs, their new home certainly wouldn't be to everyone's taste, what with upwards of a dozen wooden gargoyles perched at strategic positions (they were hand-made & cost £400 each). There was an abundance of solid oak beams and rafters too; a huge fireplace which cost about £6000; and the carved oak stairs a bargain at £30,000!
When I saw the fireplace I quipped that they'd need substantial logs, and a plentiful supply at that, to do it justice. In the event, they installed a tiny burner inside the fireplace which, I felt, looked out of place. Never mind.
I enjoyed this episode a lot. I liked Jo and Shaun and thought their use of craftsmen, master carpenters, stonemasons and others was admirable.
It sounds as though they must be mortgaged up to the hilt, along with help from their parents.
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