If there is one thing that defines a Grand Designs self-builder,
it is that they are prepared to move to the margins of society,
to leave the comfort of solid ground
and to leap into the unknown.
Now, 25 years ago, in our very first episode,
Tim and Jules did just that.
They were the first to step up to the plate.
In 1998, Tim and Jules began building a home
on a rare piece of land overlooking the cliffs of East Sussex.
So what's the deadline?
It's the bump line, it's about here.
There were not only labour deadlines but labour shortages.
A little bit disappointing.
It's not what I'd planned.
Time was running out.
There's still hope, there's still hope.
There's tonight and there may be tomorrow.
Things got messy, and the house was barely finished.
I've had about four hours' sleep.
I'm just delirious now.
Oh!
Shit.
Now, finally, after 25 years, I've come back.
Over the last quarter century,
Grand Designs has trodden some familiar territory.
People falling out with their architects,
budget calamities, babies.
Tim and Jules faced all of these, and more,
and yet they managed to build their house in six months.
That's remarkable.
What's even more remarkable is I've heard they're still living here,
which makes a revisit something of a true test of time.
I mean, is the house still looking after them well?
Has it survived the seaside location
and the fierce weather here?
Has it coped with their burgeoning family?
So I've come back to Newhaven to revisit that very first episode.
But before that, here's Tim and Jules' story.
Hello, and welcome to Grand Designs
and this week we're in Newhaven, in East Sussex -
above the sea on the cliffs, looking out.
It's the most wonderful location.
And we're here to meet a couple who've got
to build their house in double quick time.
Tim Cox owns a hang-gliding and paragliding school.
While he gives lessons, his partner Julia Brock runs the office.
You need to be over 16 for hang-gliding.
They'd had their hearts set on
building their own home since they found this site
on the cliffs above Newhaven about a year ago.
They both have families from previous relationships.
Tim has two daughters, Georgia and Jessica,
and Jules has two daughters, Ella and Kate.
So their new house will represent
something of a new beginning for them.
Tim's old family home was this beautiful timber framed cottage,
the sale of which left him with £30,000 equity
to help finance the new build.
Jules owns a three-bedroom terraced house
in the heart of Newhaven, where the family is going to be crammed
for the duration of the build,
which has to complete within three months.
So what's the deadline? It's the bump line.
It's the bump line, it's about here.
When's it due? June, early June.
So, I mean, surely though, if you have the baby,
it doesn't really matter where you're coming back home to
does it, afterwards?
It's being born at home, homebirth.
It's going to be born...?! Yes, here.
It's going to be born here. This is home. This will be home.
We can mark the spot for you, if you like.
It's going to be born in the dumper, probably.
So what's this down here?
Ah, this is where the Aga's going to be.
You've got it all mapped out. Well, we hope so.
It's going to go in here with a big chimney stack. Right.
And all this is where the foundations are going to be dug out.
And you're going...? How many kids have you got?
Well, we've got four daughters and one more coming, obviously.
And so they've all got to be accommodated here so.
Oh, wow.
So given this amazing site what, what provision are you making
in terms of the view?
You know, what are you building into the design?
Well, there's some big open aspect windows
and then there's going to be decking. Amazing.
New Zealand type decking where you've got some on the bottom
and then maybe some on the first floor to...
I think that's wonderful. ..wander out there.
Yeah, really take advantage of it. Yeah.
The heart of the house is the large open plan kitchen
and living area, dominated by two fireplaces.
Upstairs, there are two bedrooms for the girls,
who only live there part of the time,
and a big bedroom for Tim, Jules and the new baby.
On the outside, Tim wants the chimneys and the plinth wall
to be of reclaimed brick,
but most of the structure will be clad in cedar,
like a New England house,
but with Tim's New Zealand decking surrounding it.
This is a somewhat international design.
How much is this house going to cost to build?
Well, the plot cost 86 and the house is going to cost
around about 60/70, I think, thousand.
Right, and that includes decoration? No.
Furniture? No.
Garden? No, not quite.
Decking?
Decking not quite, but...
Roof? Yes, roof. Roof.
It'll include the roof, electrics and plumbing,
but basically, it's just going to be the shell.
What happens if this is not ready?
I mean, the baby comes, you know, that...
We know that's going to happen.
What happens if the house is not ready,
is that going to matter to you?
Oh, it does to me, but to you?
If it's finished in time,
it would be wonderful
and if it isn't, then it's not as if we don't have anywhere to live.
It would be quite possible for the baby to be born here,
but I...
Tim has his heart set on having the house finished
and there isn't any reason at this stage why that shouldn't be so.
The first law of building your own house is don't be optimistic.
It's the first day of work on site and there's already a problem.
The building inspector's making us go down another half a metre
into the clay.
And so you've got foundations deep enough to put a sky scraper now.
And there's maybe signs of roots in there as well,
and so they may have to put some sort of boarding
to stop any root invasion in the foundation...
..which could all cost about another 8,000 quid, they tell me.
But I'm hoping that's not going to be the case.
However, all the work they've done this morning
in the middle layers will be redone, so bit of a blow.
The next thing we have to decide
is what to do with this huge mountain of clay
that's appearing and maybe it has a resale value.
There are some amazing big lumps of clay.
But I'm just a bit stumped as to exactly what we can do with it,
how best to incorporate it into our garden landscape.
Oh, hell!
Digging deeper foundations means that a total of 200 tonnes of soil
will have to be removed, and all Tim and Jules can do
is brace themselves for the extra cost this will involve,
a frightening prospect when your job is running
a hang-gliding school that's totally dependent on
the great British weather. THUNDER ROARS
Tim needs all the flying days he can get.
No flying means no money.
Rain.
And this is cu nim.
A big cumulonimbus cloud, thunderhead.
Very dangerous, dodgy conditions to fly in.
I'm going to leave my glider in the car.
You can see the students down here,
they've walked up bravely
but now they're going to have to walk back down again.
It's always better to pack the equipment away
and to fly another day than to take any risks
with anyone hurting themselves because of the gusty conditions.
But that's... That's flying for you.
Getting planning permission for a prime coastal site
is pretty well impossible,
but Tim and Jules managed to find a derelict house
that gave them a great location with panoramic sea views.
Of course, Tim and Jules' house isn't wonderful architecture,
it's a modest design,
but it should go up quickly
because they bought a package deal from a Bristol firm,
Unique Homes.
John Hardy is the architect and owner of the company.
He drew up the plans
and he's also going to organise construction of the house,
all for a fixed price.
It's a bit like buying a fitted kitchen,
the parts are all prefabricated,
you choose the model you like,
and they bolt it together to fit your needs.
We were only commissioned to do the planning
and the building regulation approval
and then it came on that during the process of planning,
that eight week period,
they suddenly realised that perhaps really we should take it on
and look after more of the work for them.
So now you're project managing the whole build?
We're actually doing the design and build service for them.
From start to finish?
Well, all but the plumbing and the electrics.
We do all the external cladding,
the foundations, the timber frame
and we leave them with a watertight package.
Now what about timing?
Because Tim and Jules are having a baby
and they want to be in before the baby comes,
so is that going to happen?
Well, there's no better deadline than a baby arriving, is there?!
Let's face it, at the end of the day.
I mean, providing everything turns up
and all the specifications that they've chosen,
all the materials are in stock
and that's suitable for what they want,
I don't see a problem at all at this stage.
After three weeks and at an extra cost of £4,000
the foundations have finally been filled with concrete
and a base formed on which the house can be built.
Incredibly, the whole house arrives on
the back of one lorry, ready to assemble.
First, a wooden frame called the ring beam is laid on top
of the concrete for the wall panels to be nailed onto.
These panels have been made in the factory,
with windows and doorways already built in.
It's the ultimate in flat-pack assembly,
and all looks rather flimsy,
but each wall will support the next
and once it's braced with joists and roof trusses,
the structure will be as strong as any brick-built house.
Having said that,
once built you can't go knocking through walls later,
they're all part of the structure.
And look at this. Oh, and the house in reality.
Amazing. This is a house happening, look at this. Fantastic.
That is so fast. You could give birth tomorrow.
This is plans no longer.
This is a front door and windows and...
Oh, it's really, really exciting.
One of the most dramatic days of my life,
apart from the births of children, I suppose.
It's the birth of a house. It's the birth of a house.
What time did all this stuff arrive this morning?
9.30 the lorry came along. 9.30.
It's now 12 o'clock.
It's two and a half hours, you've got a house.
Yeah, it's going up quick now isn't it?
These guys seem to really know their stuff.
Yeah, I want to be inside now.
Yeah, I would like to get inside as well,
I want to see how big the kitchen is!
Just three days after the house arrived
on the back of a lorry, it's up.
It's insulated and weather proofed inside and out.
Hang on, mate. I seem to have got it the wrong way.
This team of builders is moving on.
A crew like this will put up between 70 and 90 basic shells
a year, leaving local builders to finish off.
HORN BEEPS
With nine weeks to go until the baby's born,
Tim and Jules are over budget by £4,000.
However, they're on schedule, but building is never that simple.
There's still a long way to go before any baby will be born here.
Tim and Jules have opted for a modest kit house
because of its remarkable speed.
And as if to prove the point, the project in Newhaven
is progressing very well.
The roof's on and there's still two months to go before the birth.
Well, it's an extremely exciting time because what,
we're a month into the project and already we've got a house.
We've got walls, we've got a roof, it's even waterproof,
but it's also an exciting time
because now we've got a building that we can look at
and we can start asking the more serious questions.
And I think particularly what Tim and Jules are going to ask is
does the design work?
Is it really what they hoped and planned for?
It's not what I'd planned.
What had you planned? What's different?
I had these very definite ideas
and I'm having to be flexible.
It's hard for me to be flexible.
What I want to know is what were the ideas that you cherished so much
that you're not seeing?
It's one of my main priorities still, the windows,
and until they're in and you can see through them as opposed
to this blue plastic that we have at the moment, I'm not...
I'm still not sure whether they're going to work or not.
They're very modern, they're very big.
I know that you considered all kinds of materials
for the doors and windows but ultimately you've fallen back on
the idea of using UPVC,
which is not what I suppose everybody would use, perhaps,
in their wildest romantic dreams.
No, given a longer time to plan it
we would have got oak frames in and paid the extra.
But we're running to a schedule now
and we can't get them made them in time.
And also, we've kind of ran out of money.
Again, the tiles are not as I'd imagined them to be.
I was under the impression they were much smaller
and much more clay tiles and flat. I mean, these are black.
And these are, you know... Black concrete.
Industrial monoliths.
So did you see...? Did you not see a sample?
Weren't you given a sample... No. ..before they were put up?
We didn't ask.
I go through life doing this kind of thing, you know,
and every time I do, I always put together samples
of the materials I'm going to be using,
because I don't know what it's going to look like.
And here are you guys saying,
"Oh, yeah, we think it's going to be great.
"We've got... In our heads, it's all going to look...
"You know, that's going to be perfect."
But in fact, I mean, I'm not at all sure that it is.
Well, I'm quite happy with the way things are turning out.
I'm intrinsically optimistic.
Pathologically, I think. Pathologically optimistic.
KEVIN LAUGHS
But you have to with a job like mine.
You know, have to hope people are going to survive
after leaping off the cliff.
And you have to hope that this house is going to look all right
when it's finished.
I don't share Tim's optimism.
So far, his build has been compromised by a tight schedule,
by money, and by a rather woolly approach to detail and planning.
Planning that could have avoided the next problem.
See this? Yeah.
In here... Eugh. ..is the septic tank.
It is, isn't it? It's very rusty and dirty.
It's defunct, I'm afraid, and in here is all the decking.
What?! I can't afford to do both.
I've got to revamp this or make a new one. You're joking.
And the cost of the decking is going to pay for
a new sewage system, I'm afraid to say.
That's really sad. It is sad, but there you are.
This just goes to show that when building your own house
you cannot plan enough.
Tim just didn't realise that his septic tank was unusable.
A new tank is going to cost £4,000.
Along with the extra foundations,
this is going to take them 8,000 over budget.
They can claw four grand back by doing without
the decking they had planned,
but it's going to leave them with no margin for any overspend.
So with money problems getting worse,
a house half built,
Jules less than a month away from giving birth,
Tim leaves it all behind and goes hang-gliding.
I think it's obviously a good opportunity
to get away from it all for a bit,
forget about plumbers and electricians
and underfloor heating and...
And to do what I really enjoy, which is flying.
As a hang glider pilot, it's a fairly individual thing,
it's you who decides whether you take off or land
and it's always you up against the elements.
You're making the decision making,
so I guess to that extent building your own house
is kind of similar in that you're in charge of
the project from its beginning to the end.
And that's pretty satisfying.
Back on site, I'm not sure that Jules,
now eight months pregnant, shares that enthusiasm
about building their own home.
I'm feeling very pregnant and feeling very fat and quite useless.
The baby is due to be born in three weeks' time.
There's an awful lot to do in the house.
It's just beginning to be a little bit disappointing
quite how slowly it's going.
On Tim's return, the new septic tank is going in,
a solution there, but he's returned to more problems.
The windows have been delivered, but they don't all fit.
Malcom, his builder,
is having to work overtime trying to make them work.
Macolm had said that he'd hoped to be done today,
having put all the windows in,
but constantly having to shave bits off the frame
and finding that two or three don't fit at all
means that's it taken him longer
and that's put the glazing guy back a bit
because there's a separate guy
who comes to put the glazing in the windows.
And...it goes on.
The reclaimed bricks arrive for the plinth walls
and the chimneys, but even this doesn't go smoothly.
One palette load collapses,
smashing 300 bricks, costing 70p each,
and there aren't any brickies to lay the good ones either.
Roger, bricklayer, when's he starting?
Is it the same man, Phil?
By now, the relationship with Unique Homes is under strain.
The real problem is that they're based in Bristol
and are finding it hard to source and manage a local work force.
A whole week goes by without a single workman showing up
and it's up to Tim to fix it.
TIM GROANS
God.
It seems to me that I've found all the bloody people
to build this house. TIM GROANS
At this point, Tim and Jules have enough
to think about without worrying about the setting of the house.
They have no plans for a garden and not enough money
for the decking they wanted,
so the house is going to take years to settle into its surroundings.
That is going to have to be my job on the build,
to help a New England design
make sense on the Sussex coast,
without adding to Tim and Jules' growing financial problems.
They've already got too much on their mind,
what with a project with no builders.
The workers eventually do turn up.
They've got a lot of catching up to do
and it starts with the brick wall.
Tim's taken advantage of the delay
and has decided to put a doorway where
the second chimney was meant to go.
The brick plinth is built up around the timber frame.
It's not a structural wall
and I personally think it doesn't add much to the building.
Inside, the UPVC windows are being finished off,
meaning that the rooms can be plaster boarded.
At last, the cedar cladding is going on.
It'll complete the exterior,
but will the house be ready in time?
How are you and the baby?
We're very well, thank you. It's due tomorrow.
Ah, ready to go! Tomorrow, tomorrow.
So it's not going to be born here?
There's still hope, there's still hope.
There's tonight and there may be tomorrow.
I seem to remember, Tim, there was a commitment
that the baby will be born in this house.
You know, there was no doubt at all.
That's plan A, yeah.
I don't remember hearing about plan B.
Plan B is now in action at this very moment,
to move in four weeks late.
Can you blame any particular party?
I think it's been a catalogue of circumstances, really.
It's difficult to pin the blame.
I think we've learnt a good deal.
For me, there was a time when seeing nothing happening
with the house was a great source of frustration
because you go time's ticking by and nothing's moving forwards,
and yet the baby was inevitably moving towards arrival day.
But now...
Well, it's so imminently due
and the house is so completely not ready that...
The house can wait.
The baby coming is important now.
And as long as that all goes well, then...
Then that's OK. ..we'll move in later on and it'll be fine.
Jules does finally have her baby at home,
unfortunately it's the wrong home. BABY CRIES
She gave birth to a healthy baby boy,
surrounded by her extended family.
Wow.
Good timing. It was.
BABY CRIES
Tim and Jules didn't have the home birth that they wanted.
With all the delays, they're now running £6,000 over budget
and their problems still aren't over.
Here we are.
Much the same, nothing's changed.
This is home, not quite yet.
We've missed the deadline.
You were supposed to have been born in here.
The name of the babe is Tiger, Tiger Jules.
And unfortunately not everybody likes Tiger Jules,
but I think it's a great name.
We can't move in till we've solved the mud problem basically.
We just need something.
At the moment, the ground has dried up quite a lot
but when it rains it's unbearable.
And the idea of us all trying to tramp in and out of the house
and through the garden and...
It's like, no, no, we can't do it! It's cloying mud.
For the sake of my sanity.
I think Tim and Jules are coming round to the idea
that the exterior and the setting of this house
are as important as the interior.
Tim has borrowed £3,000 from his dad.
This was less than he originally
planned to spend on the decking,
but I'm sure that we can engineer
a cheaper substitute using local materials.
With surroundings as beautiful as these,
who wouldn't take advantage of them
and use them to give that house a real sense of place,
to help it flourish with local colour and local materials.
A house built out of local materials will already sit well
in the landscape, but for Tim and Jules' house,
the garden and landscaping are the means
to root it in its setting, by bringing the beach up to the house.
The idea is to use reclaimed railway sleepers.
These will form a jetty reaching out towards the beach below.
The whole structure will sit on shingle
and the finishing touch with be a selection of hardy,
wild-looking plants.
Unlike traditional hard paving,
this kind of garden is easy to create.
Gradually, the shingle covers the mud around the house
and the great clay mounds are turfed over
to resemble green sand dunes.
This gives an instant transformation,
although, it's more expensive than growing grass seed.
It's time to see what Tim and Jules think of it so far.
The decking, it's made such a huge difference.
In fact, it's made far more difference than I thought it would.
Well, I'm interested you say that
because when I did that drawing,
the ground plan of the house, put the decking on it,
in fact, when you look at the size that it occupies,
it's not double, but it's a significant large area
and it makes your living area, your outside living area,
as it were much, much bigger.
Well, I'd thought that once we had the house built
that was it, the most important thing was the house,
and actually, with retrospect, it just stood in a space
and now we've... A muddy field.
Yes, a very... A very muddy field
But now we've paid attention to the outside,
it's really brought it together more.
It really kind of... It flows now. Gives it a context. Yeah.
And it also relates it to what's going on out there.
I mean, with the shingle and the sleepers,
it's all seaside materials, really.
Yes, and these are great because when it's pouring with rain,
well, they're wet but they're not muddy.
There's no clay on them, which is great. Yeah.
In the end, the decking cost £3,000,
two thirds of the price Tim was originally expecting to pay.
It's the last stage of the project
and Tim's parted ways with Unique Homes.
He felt that as he had to find the bricklayers,
he might as well organise the rest of the project himself.
John Hardy, the architect admits that lessons have been learnt.
I do believe that the client feel that they weren't gaining
the best of services because I wasn't available
and I can only be in so many places at once.
One of the things we've learnt during Tim and Julia's project
is that Unique Homes will only be of a certain size.
My original plans were to build Unique Homes
up to a size whereby we'd be constructing 50 houses a year,
but in reality, having developed it to a certain stage
we're now downsizing to ensure that we build no more than 15 houses,
but they'll be 15 houses of quality
and I will be involved in every one of those projects
to ensure that I'm satisfied with the way that it's worked.
So if you're thinking of building a kit house,
make sure it's a local firm.
In this case, Tim got a £3,500 rebate,
and he's now on the final stretch of the build.
This includes the decorating,
once the girls have decided what colour they want.
It's the same red as that other one, isn't it?
Yeah, I like the glossy colours, but, I mean, we could do sparkly.
Maybe we could do sparkly.
I might want that and then a sparkly yellow ceiling.
No glitters, I don't want glitters.
You don't you want glitters? They're vile!
Oh, I like that green. Yeah, I'm going to have that green.
That green's nice. That green's nice.
Jules hasn't taken long to get back to work.
I remembered that having a baby means
that it just takes possibly ten, possibly 20 times longer
to do everything.
But he's not very much of a help at the moment.
There's not much I can do about it, really.
Grin and bear it and stick one tile on
the bathroom wall about every two days.
The piece de resistance will hopefully be the kitchen,
which I really want gold on the walls.
Not very many wall units, in fact maybe none at all, but gold.
Not yellow, a real kind of metallic colour.
But I'm not quite sure how to get it.
It's proving rather problematical.
Ella chose this colour.
It's supposed to be jeans red.
But... And if she doesn't like it,
then she can paint it out in something different.
It's sort of chainsaw massacre red, isn't it?
I'm very run down,
and I can't even draw a straight line any more.
I've got no money,
I bashed myself in the face on the mantlepiece.
And...
..my Land Rover's head gasket has blown up.
I've had about four hours' sleep in as many weeks.
I'm just delirious now.
Now...
Oh, God.
Shit.
Tim's back on the baby shift,
so I show Jules how to get her golden kitchen
without breaking the bank. Up! Oh!
Show me how it's done. It's easy, easy.
Now, I tell you what, pass me that...
Is it that one? There's one with some glue in.
With milk in. Yeah, it looks like milk.
It's just gold size, which is a water-based thing.
And you just brush it on.
I'm not going to do the whole wall.
Oh!
Oh, dear. All right, then.
Well, the idea is that I show you, and then you have a go.
So this is the brass leaf? Yeah, this is fake gold, yeah.
Oh, it's so thin.
Well, I'll just press it down as well as I can
through the wax paper and then just...
HE WHISTLES JULES GASPS
It's great, it's so gold!
Number two. Good heavens.
Transfer brass leaf, or Dutch metal,
is cheap and easy to use.
By laying it on a yellow background, the gaps and joints are disguised.
Oh, that's fairly foolproof. It's not difficult. Ah.
Beautiful finish, and the rest is down to you, in between feeds.
I hope it'll be different when you see me next.
I think it's going to be wonderful.
We'll have to invite you back into the gold kitchen,
sunglasses to be provided at the door. Money corner. Yeah.
Thank you, Kevin. Good luck. Thank you.
The day for moving out of the terrace
and into the new house has finally arrived.
At last, Tim has a place to put the mountains of his stuff
that have been in storage since the build started.
That is it.
Well, we've nearly covered the entire floor. We're done.
I don't want to ever move house again. Time for tea.
No, I could understand that.
It's taken six months to build,
it's gone way over the original budget,
but at last Tim and Jules have got to the stage
where they can say the house is finished.
The build has seen the birth of Tiger, their fifth child,
and has almost caused complete financial ruin.
It's time to see if it's all been worthwhile.
And it had been.
Tim and Jules turned their timber kit house
into a warm and inviting home for seven.
Oh, yeah, look at this.
It's like a big kitchen-diner.
You know, like old farmhouses. Mm.
Everyone lives in the kitchen, don't they?
Upstairs were all the family bedrooms.
Yeah, this is our room.
All with coastline panoramas.
Beautiful view of the harbour.
The bathroom paid homage to its structural history.
It's the same weather boarding that's on the outside of the house.
It's nice. It's like a sauna inside.
The kitchen still gleamed with the brass leaf I'd shown Jules.
It gives this rich feel.
Yeah, I like the gold against the blue.
Neither of them were gardeners
but they were determined to experiment
with some exotic plants to help the house settle into its new home.
It's amazing what just a few bits of greenery make.
However, the building still stood stark against the barren land.
So how does it stand now, 25 years on?
I mean, it's got to have changed, hasn't it?
It's got to have matured.
The setting, the setting at least, will be different.
I can't wait to see it.
In 1999, Tim and Jules were the first-ever Grand Designs couple
to leap into the self-build realm
and build their blended family home on the white cliffs of East Sussex.
It was their hard finish deadline of a pregnancy
that got them so far, so quickly,
but how did the house cope with the rushed decisions
and the unforgiving south-westerly winds?
Architecture yearns, if you like, for immortality.
Buildings hope...
Hope to live forever.
And the difficulty with this house was that it was put up so quickly,
and it was made of timber,
you wonder whether on top of this cliff,
with these strong, salty south-westerly winds,
whether or not the building has been able
to survive properly over that quarter century,
whether it's still in one piece.
I can't tell from here,
because all I can see is a forest.
Like a little Eden.
25 years ago, the house stood on barren land,
exposed and vulnerable to the elements.
With the passage of time,
this place now overflows with new life,
a forest maze has sprung up.
Willow, corkscrew willow.
Hazel, sycamore.
Wow. Oak, pine.
Scots Pine over there. Wow.
I mean, from a field,
Jules and Tim have created an amazing forest here.
Can't see a house, though.
But as I push deeper into the woods,
I get a teasing glimpse of where our story started.
How about that?
This is amazing.
Our first-ever Grand Designs house
now has a rich and lush new setting,
a forest that has flourished around it.
Oh, it's full of curiosity and wonder
and 25 years' worth of stuff and life.
It's beautiful.
Hello! Oh, I know you! Hello, Kevin!
How have you been for the last 25 years?
I've been great. How are you? How are you? Good.
Good to see you both. Come here. Tim.
You look very young. Yeah, I am well. How are you both?
Oh, fine. Well, older, but no wiser. The same. You're the same!
That's the wonderful thing. Do you think so?
Yeah. I mean, everything else has changed here.
The woodland, which has sprung from... The garden's grown, yeah.
Well, it's a bit more than that. It's a forest.
It goes right down to the track. And it's so mature. It's lovely.
If I remember rightly, the house was sort of a...
..orange, yellowy colour.
It's sort of a dark reddy brown now.
What we discovered was that in the winter gales,
the cedar cladding wasn't quite up to the job. Right.
So, the answer was to tile the upper west and south face.
Oh, so that's... Now I see. Of course.
That's worked well.
And the sleepers, which I think were your idea,
they have kept so much mud out of the house. That's great.
Do you like our deck? I love it.
It has lasted really well.
It's just built out of roofing stringers and...
Leftovers. Yeah.
The girls loved it as well, when they were younger.
They slept, we thought, one night out there,
but in the end, they slept nearly a year on that deck.
How amazing. They'd drag all their bedding out. Oh, seriously?
And they loved it.
So, inside... Well, you must come in.
You must have redecorated since 1999. Only partially.
Hardly. Really? Oh, my goodness.
How wrong was I.
In 25 years, they haven't changed a thing.
The living room retains its warm inviting charm.
Everything is very much still here, including the gold wall.
It's still so gold!
Did it do that Chinese thing of being the money corner?
Or was the house the money pit?
It was supposed to encourage me to cook,
but that didn't work in that direction.
This house is pretty unchanged.
Yet, of course, family life has softened the building's edges.
Even the money-saving windows seem to have fitted in.
I mean, the fireplace is as was, isn't it? Everything... The floor.
The floor's been amazing.
It's a bit tough, a bit unforgiving.
Tiger, he couldn't crawl on his knees. He had to go...
On to his toes.
..up on his toes.
Family photos and ageing furniture
serve as reminders of how this building has been
a timber vessel in which so much life has happened.
If the kitchen table could speak, that would have many memories.
I guess that's one of the advantages of staying in the same place,
you can build up a patina of memory.
It kind of makes it really a solid home,
especially for kids and ultimately grandkids.
Yeah. I think the whole place is going to come into its own again
with the grandkids. Yeah. They already love the garden.
Have you got any? I've got three.
And I've got two.
Oh, hang on. There's a tribe, yeah.
Was this always green?
This was always green,
and what's more is we repainted it green about ten years ago.
Now that most of the adult children have moved out,
there are some welcoming guest rooms for when they visit
with their young families.
Although, Tiger now has an attic bedroom.
Oh, this is exactly the same, is it? This is as it was.
It is exactly the same.
Another familiar space.
The log cabin bathroom, remarkably after 25 years, is unchanged.
The best green outcome of this project is
the fact that nobody has changed it in 25 years, it's still the same.
Yeah. We made the decision when the house was built, that's it.
I didn't really want to make any decisions of that kind again,
so I haven't.
I do so love Tim and Jules' philosophy.
We seem addicted to remodelling our homes.
Here's a couple who are content with what they have.
Oh! Oh, my goodness. You see right out.
Though the bedroom looks familiar, the views have changed.
Now there is a bounty of treetops as well as a sea view.
It's quite expansive now. Good, isn't it?
With the glass on all three sides here,
it's like a sort of observation deck.
Downstairs it felt like I was in a forest,
up here it looks as though I'm looking out over
the canopy of somewhere in Portugal. Yeah.
Every window in this house is a picture in itself.
I don't think we quite realised that when we built the house.
No, we have been lucky.
It's lovely to see the sea every morning.
You end up thinking you're taking it for granted,
but I'm sure it sinks in.
Downstairs, Tim and Jules have taken advantage
of their south facing home.
This is completely new. Yes.
When did this go up? Oh, 15 years ago.
Oh, it's completely new! It's only 15 years old.
But what's it for?
In the summer it's a snooze room.
And then through here is... Oh, another new one.
Who built this? Is this you, Tim?
Yeah, everything here is salvaged.
So this seems to me like part greenhouse,
part conservatory. How do you use it?
Propagating.
If we want to try our hand at some vegetables.
It's a little bit of a... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bringing things on from seed. It's all good, yeah.
Growing the grapes.
That in itself is just a...
It's a lovely space just to watch them grow.
Outside, the house disappears into wilderness
of hundreds of trees that Tim and Jules planted 25 years ago.
If you remember, this was mud. Yeah, I do.
It was like the Somme.
Did you go for specific species?
I mean, did you discover that certain things
worked here coastally and not others?
I'm not sure that we really knew what we were doing,
but it didn't seem to matter.
We did plant stuff that would support insects,
which is why we've got a lot of oaks.
And that in turn, of course, then that's supportive of birds.
Yeah. And then you realise you get the bird song,
you get the dawn chorus, you get the butterflies.
It's nice for Tiger, I think, growing up here, especially,
because it's a massive area that was his kingdom.
What are you going to do today, then? Got any plans?
I'm sitting on a broken chair.
It sounds like Tiger, the baby who grew up alongside the house
and its landscape,
particularly benefited from Tim and Jules' wild forest creation.
He's still at home, and at 26, he's a full-time paragliding instructor,
who also spends time raising a falcon,
and he's a published children's author.
Hi, Kevin. Last time I saw you, you fitted into a shoe box.
I think I was in the wheelbarrow last time.
Yeah, in the wheelbarrow, indeed!
And how much time did you spend out here as a kid?
Oh, an enormous amount.
My parents had a very hands-off approach to parenting.
They just kicked me out.
I'd go and build a den.
And then when dinner was ready, the bell would ring.
It's like something from Paddy Clarke, or some old school story.
But you've also bought a bit of land yourself, haven't you?
I have. I've grown up with this garden,
and as the trees have grown and we've had some opportunities come up
with neighbours and now we've expanded out.
I mean, the garden was instrumental in my childhood,
shaping how I see the world and the environment.
Now there's a forest school here.
They do various activities.
Lots of the activities that I enjoyed growing up.
I actually wrote a book about it. It's called 'How to Be an Explorer.
"Outdoor skills and know-how for young adventurers." I love that.
The older I get, the more you look back at your childhood and go,
"OK, yeah, having this outdoor space massively influenced
"the kind of person I became."
Maybe it was the name as well, who knows?
Yeah, It's a great name to have on the front cover.
Tiger. Yeah.
You know that that person is not going to be a shrinking violet.
Growing up here has evidently played a huge part in shaping Tiger.
I wonder if the house has impacted his parents just as much
What are your regrets about doing it? If there are any.
That you think, "Oh, we should have done that.
"It'd be great if we'd have..." None. No? For me, none.
No. It's worked out beyond our wildest hopes.
And the kids have all thrived.
We know how lucky we've been.
I think it's quite rare to find people living in
the same house that they bought or built 25 years ago.
I think that's... It's to be celebrated.
Yeah. We never thought of moving anywhere else.
There was never any reason to go anywhere else.
And the house itself has fulfilled its...expectations and ours.
Yeah. It'll have another chapter. Yeah.
This is still our chapter, but it'll have another one, I hope.
What's your view of the building now?
What do you see it as?
What do you see the building as being responsible for,
for the last 25 years? Life. Our life.
Setting our children up to cope with the things that they might encounter
in their lives.
And having a blooming good time being here
and being in the space and being with the family
and being with each other.
I agree with her. Good!
Do you ever look at the film that we made in episode one?
It's indelibly fastened on my memory.
It was great fun.
I think that Grand Designs gave us a record
that we would never have had otherwise. Yeah.
So I'm quite grateful for that because I know it's something my
grandkids will be really interested in watching.
And...
And so, yeah, thank you for that. Well, thank you.
It was a privilege.
We didn't really quite know what we were doing
because we had to forge a different kind of programme
that hadn't existed before.
So thank you for putting up with us.
More than a huge privilege to come back.
Just magical.
After 25 years, I feel honoured to be back here and to witness
the ways this house has worked its magic
on our very first Grand Designers.
Jules and Tim's joy, hope and energy
fuelled their self-build adventure
and literally laid the groundworks
for the journey others in our long series have embarked on.
Architects talk about buildings as if they are containers
for human activity.
But of course, they're much more than that.
They're places where our imaginations can flourish.
They can act as catalysts for our wellbeing.
They can also grow, like this place has.
And with the building growing and changing,
so the surroundings have also grown up around it,
and the family have grown and their stories have changed.
And it teaches me that although we make a series about
the ups and downs, the dramas and excitement of construction,
of building something and the difficulties of that,
actually the really exciting narratives,
the great stories happen when the building is finished.
That's when it really takes off,
as Tim and Jules' house proves.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media