A Grand Design Space Renovation Argument

There’s an argument going on at our place. Not out loud; it’s not like the neighbour’s screaming at us for having trimmed a wee bit too much of her japonica which was hanging over on our side. No, this argument is much quieter, in fact silent, but no less a major heavyweight bout.

Mortgage-on-Thames

Having recently bought in Sunbury-on-Thames – or ‘Mortgage-on-Thames’ as we now call it – we have once again (of necessity) become property renovators. Liz and I have done this at least twice before, so we’re no strangers when it comes to peeling off old wallpaper, jemmying away rotten timbers, or in fact ripping down whole walls. Sometimes we do it just for fun, so you might want to be a bit cautious before inviting us round to your place; if we arrive with a bottle of Chardonnay and a crowbar you know you’re in trouble.

It will come as no surprise therefore to learn that over the years we have become avid followers of Kevin McCloud, George Clarke, Sarah Beeny et al, as we have watched them observe, guide, fret, advise and sometimes scoff at people’s various restoration, facelift, or complete demolition-and-rebuild projects on TV.

We’ve become immune to the drama; cue Kevin, walking towards camera, away from mud-clogged building site with stranded digger in the background: ‘The thing is, will their budget cope with this winter of discontent? Can Bob and Sally survive not only the stresses of the ever-delayed project, but the challenge of living with each other in a tent at the bottom of their soggy garden while their building project becomes more and more stuck in a sea of mud, ennui and overdue credit card payments?’ 

Probably, but we have another four commercial breaks and similar pieces-of-rhetoric-to-camera until we find out.

Sarah Beeny is positively funereal in her pre-break summaries, her voice lowering to that of a minister presiding over the eulogies and final words before the coffin is committed, probably to a muddy hole in the ground due to the worst winter since ever. The editor even adds a blue-grey tinge to the images of the property pre-reno work, along with sad violin music FX, just so we get the message that this project was death personified until SB came along.

That’s okay, there’s a lot we like about the programmes too, not least of which is having a wager on whether the wife in each Grand Designs episode will get pregnant during the building project (she does, always), and whether the same will happen between George’s first and final visits to his Amazing Spaces properties (she usually does too). We have a side-bet on whether the presenters are to blame. Sarah Beeny seems to be pregnant herself in every episode of her property programmes, but since neither Kevin nor George feature we can hardly hold them accountable.

No, what irks us the most is how Kevin endlessly talks about how the grand design in question needs to maintain ‘a dialogue’ with the landscape in which it sits, and how ‘the narrative’ of the house and grounds needs to be well-planned. The ceiling needs to ‘engage’ with the walls, while the roof should ‘embrace’ the distant horizon.

The garden incommunicado

Well I can tell you now that our property is having a blazing row, not just with the landscape but within itself. For example, the garden is definitely not speaking to the house. There is no dialogue between them, unless it’s the house saying, ‘You bastard! Look at you! Overgrown, unkempt, the scruffiest in the neighbourhood. What about me?!’

Actually the house is no better (as the garden will quickly tell you); the walls have turned their faded yellow stucco backs on the local landscape, most likely because they’re too embarrassed to engage in any discourse. It would be short-lived anyway. ‘Yellow? Dirty old yellowy stucco? You cannot be serious!’ says the landscape.

Nothing to see here, move along...

Inside, the décor has reached a stony silence with contemporary norms, the bright pink walls of the lounge and dark green of the dining room having nothing to say to today’s paint charts, especially magnolia, Britain’s biggest selling interior hue.

The roof tiles, spaced like rotting teeth in a sugar-loving octogenarian who has never visited a dentist in his life, do maintain a Theresa May-like conversation with everything below, a sort-of Brexit attitude of, ‘We’re definitely leaving, bit by bit, but we still expect to have protection from water ingress, and we’d like some guarantee of ongoing commitment to friendly upkeep of relationships, if not actual tiles’. Strong and stable, that’s what the roof wants to be.

The shed in tendrilly engagement

The garden path hates the lawn, the sage bush and adjacent rose have fallen out, while the only engagement to be seen is where the ivy has got the garden shed well and truly in its tendrilly clutches, and even that’s an unwelcome Weinstein moment. The shed is likely to fail its audition and be blacklisted. (What, too soon?) (Yep – Ed. #ShedsMatterToo)

At the river’s edge there’s a tree stump making a bid to escape across the water, while the nearby flagpole is saying nothing, there being a lack of vexillologists in the family at present.

All-in-all it’s an enormous spat, and Kevin would have his scripting skills cut out to find any meaningful dialogue anywhere on the property.

So it’s been interesting this week meeting with a couple of architects as we talk through our ideas for Mortgage-on-Thames, and we now keenly await their responses. Given the obvious conflict, we see them as quasi property marriage guidance counsellors, whose job it is to make sure that meaningful dialogue takes place between the house and Sunbury, the building and the garden, and the property in general with the neighbourhood.

Liz and I did briefly discuss inviting Kevin or George round to cover our renovation project for their TV programmes, but then dismissed the idea. I mean, we have a new mortgage; we certainly can’t afford another child.


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