Product Description

"Grand Designs" provides inspiration and information to anyone thinking of taking on the challge of building their own house. During the 1990s architects and designers have increasingly called for us to change our houses to reflect the way we live, exchanging poky kitchens for larger living spaces, having more room than one bathroom and taking the surrounding environment into our plans. What better way of accomadating such demands than by designing and building your own home, creating a living space suited to your changing lifestyle? This aspirational book not only provides a guide to the series, it illustrates the increasingly fashionable desire to design and build a home of one's own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122602 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Buying a house is often cited as one of the most traumatic experiences life can offer. But buying, as viewers of the TV series Grand Designs know, is a piece of cake compared with actually building the thing yourself. In the book accompanying the series, Kevin McCloud is a sure-footed guide to the whole process, providing a mass of detailed instruction to help the would-be builder from idea to reality, and following the fortunes of eight sets of self-builders as they attempt to build their dream homes. A barn- style house in Oxfordshire, an eco-house in Suffolk ("complete with composting toilets"), a concrete and glass structure in suburban Doncaster, construction of straw bales and sand- bags in Islington and a converted water-tower are among the very different projects featured. Their builders need great reserves of determination and ingenuity, for the tribulations are immense. From finding a plot to build on, through the bureaucracy of planning restrictions and legal considerations--even determining the ownership of land can be far from simple--to design, logistics and project management, the obstacles are hair- raising, but the satisfactions to be gained on completion are profound. All the builders share a sense of commitment and a belief that that they are embarking on a new phase in their lives, tantamount in some cases to a kind of religious conversion. --Robin Davidson

Customer Reviews

Not enough detail
I was interested in the TV programme, so I thought I would purchase the book. I felt the book did not go deep enough into the subject of grand designs, it only explained, the process of designing and building which had already been discussed on the TV series. I expected to find more detail on the whole subject, rather than than a potted version of the TV series.

Great programme, disappointedly average & disjointed book.
Rather than following the format of the show, the book attempts to explain how to build your own home. But it attempts to do this by referring to different projects covered in the series. This results in a stilted progression through how one might build your own home. Assuming you hire an architect for episode one, produce the foundations for episode 2, walls for episode 5, the roof of episode 4 and project plan for episode 3. A missed opportunity.

A wonderful book.
This book is extremely well written, and very readable. It contains many colour photographs, which bring the book to life. This book is a joy to have. It covers all the projects featured in the TV series, but would be equally enjoyable to anybody who had not seen these programs. It covers various projects including conversions, timber framed seaside house, eco house, straw house, oak framed house and many more. It would make a good reference book for anyone considering building or converting a house, it is packed with inspiration and ideas.