Martin The House That £100k Built

House prices are going through the roof

and with banks making it tough to borrow,

buying a home in the UK is becoming an impossible dream.

We just can't get a mortgage and, round here,

the house prices are so high.

So a few brave, ordinary people are trailblazing what could be

the solution for many of us -

trying to build their own home from scratch.

Maverick architect Piers Taylor and me, Kieran Long,

are following six self-builders, as they take on

the biggest gamble of their lives.

I haven't got any option. If you've got to do it, you've got to do it.

We will try to help them create the dream house they've longed for.

Wow!

They need to be clever with their cash and creative with design.

-It, kind of, has clarity. It looks very beautiful.

-It does.

-If it was me, I think I'd put my bath right here.

-Kinky.

But each has their life savings at stake...

Oh, what have they done?!

..little, or no, building experience...

I have got absolutely no clue, with design.

..and a budget of less than £100,000 to spend.

-How much money have you got left?

-Let me see...

-'It won't be easy.'

If I think too much about EVERYTHING, then I think, "Whoa!"

Tonight, a pizza van owner from Leeds cooks up a plan

to build a massive four-bedroomed house on an extremely difficult

backland plot.

Walking through into the main living area.

And he has gambled his mum and dad's retirement money on the build.

It's our savings

and our pension.

But as costs spiral, he will have to deal with mounting problems.

How the hell is he going to do this? It's four times the size

of an average semi-detached house.

He will have to make radical design decisions, just to get it finished.

I have no idea how I'm going to do this.

Today, I am meeting someone facing a problem familiar to us all -

being priced out of buying in your own area.

If you work for yourself, the chances of raising a mortgage

to buy a house are even slimmer.

That's exactly the situation that Martin Whyment finds himself in.

I'm off to Leeds, to see a bit of derelict scrubland he's found

and hopes to turn into the house of his dreams.

But it is going to be a massive ask,

because Martin will have all the pressures of building a property

while running his own small business.

In she goes. Cooked at 300C for approximately four minutes.

29-year-old Martin's only option to get the home he wants

is to build it himself.

In the area that I want to live, it is quite expensive to find a house.

It's just to have my own space.

It's something that most people would like to try and do and I just thought

it was the right time and went ahead with it.

But Martin has a big problem -

the deal he did to get the land has used up all his hard-saved cash.

I managed to get a good-sized site. At this point now, I own the land,

but I don't have any money.

Martin's only hope to find the £100,000 he needs is to turn

to his mum and dad.

Geoff and Elaine worked in local schools

and now live in a small bungalow, 40 miles away, in Oldham.

As a retired couple, the money is not easy to find.

-We decided to finance the project.

-It's our savings and our pension.

It wasn't easily lent to him.

We have a promise he'll pay us back, so that our pension fund

is back to where it was.

Martin has got bold plans - a four-bedroomed house,

the kind of property he'd never be able to buy for £100,000.

So, front door...

..into my shower room.

It's not the sort of thing I would have done. I would not have taken

the risk that he's taken.

Just worry sometimes that he can't manage to project manage this

and make a living for himself with the pizza business.

It is a lot of responsibility to know that, effectively,

I've taken most of their savings and put it into a house.

Obviously, I would never want to let them down,

so I do worry about it,

so I need to try and get it paid back as soon as possible, really.

Martin's building in the Leeds suburb where he has been renting.

On a very modest annual income of around £15,000,

he was priced out of the property market.

Tell me how you came to find this plot and how you ended up buying it.

Funny story, actually. I used to live round the corner,

so I've lived here about five years in the area.

When I started to look for somewhere to live,

I obviously looked in the area I was and I actually used to rent

-that second garage.

-This was a line of garages?

Yeah, so I spoke to the owners,

to see whether they'd be interested in

selling the plot for me to put a house on.

What made you want build your own house, in the first place?

Obviously, the age I am, I don't have my independence,

-so I thought, "If I'm going to do it, I might as well do it now."

-Yeah.

It's going to be, hopefully, a family home in the future.

I'm not really thinking about that,

but I didn't want to just build a small house

that, if I had a family, I'm going to move out in two or three years.

This is a massive challenge for anyone.

Martin does have some building experience,

but never on a budget this tight.

Are you going to get your hands dirty?

Yeah, I hoping to do as much as I possibly can,

because if I sub-contracted the whole build out, there's no way

I could afford it. I'm going to just crack on and just try it.

With no spare cash, Martin has enlisted the help

of an architect friend to draw up plans to his specifications.

But what Martin has come up with is extremely ambitious.

On the ground floor, a small entrance hall

opens into a huge lounge-diner...

..while at the other end of the very large building,

space is given over to a car port.

The house is relatively narrow but upstairs, he is planning

an office and four bedrooms laid out along a corridor.

For a house of this size in the area,

you would normally pay over £400,000.

His parents will fund the build until he can move in

and get a mortgage, but the design is not their cup of tea.

I looked at it a couple of days ago and I thought it might make

quite a nice children's nursery or an old folk's home!

We support him fully. It's just that we don't

happen to like what he's building.

Martin's situation is familiar to so many people.

He's facing the problems

that people in their 20s and 30s face in this country.

He's chosen a really high-risk strategy to get his house done.

It's a difficult site, he's building a very big house

and he's borrowing from mum and dad.

I'm really rooting for Martin to pull this one off,

but I'm worried. It's a lot of house to try and build for £100,000.

Planning permission is already in place for the lengthy build,

so we cannot dramatically alter the basic frame of the house,

but it's the vast interior and costly finish

that will present the toughest challenge.

Martin's going to need support and the man by our side

throughout this is acclaimed architect Piers Taylor.

Having built his own award-winning house, he has first-hand experience

of the highs and lows of the self-builder.

The first thing is, it seems huge. This is 100,000 quid and,

ostensibly, on paper, this looks like a 300-grand build.

It's a big house, by any stretch of the imagination. Let's be clear,

to do anything this size for 100,000 quid is a challenge.

Building on an awkward, overlooked backland site will throw up

a myriad of problems.

Typically, they cost a lot of money. I know buildings on backland sites

that have cost millions. We need to remember

this is a £100,000, low-cost house.

But while Martin's been hugely ambitious about the exterior,

Piers thinks he has taken a very conservative approach

to the interior.

My concerns inside are, this looks like a conventional building inside.

Upstairs, there's this rabbit warren of bedrooms and this conventional,

sort of, dogleg passageway.

It feels like plasterboard city and that is a problem.

And one wonders, given that he's a young, 29-year-old guy,

why he can't do something a bit more dynamic

with some other, more interesting, modern materials.

There is a whole host of simple changes that he thinks

could dramatically improve the layout and save money.

Living there by himself, one wonders why he doesn't just

take this wall out and reconfigure this, to be one big bedroom here,

with this fantastic view.

But Piers has got more serious concerns about the plans

for the ground floor.

Downstairs, he's compartmentalised this.

I worry that this is actually going to be quite a dark, mean space.

There is stuff in here you could just take out to save money.

And this wall could just go and it would be a better building

and a cheaper building.

One can picture this painted magnolia, with bull-nose skirtings.

Perhaps he hasn't seen great architecture of contemporary houses,

so for him, this is pretty radical.

We could push him further by showing him some good stuff.

It looks ambitious. Let's actually, dare I say, make him more ambitious,

to make him realise he CAN do this, if he's clever.

So, our challenge is to find

inspiring ways to improve on Martin's design,

but somehow keep him within his £100,000 budget.

On site, Martin's beginning his 18-month odyssey and he is

sticking to his plan to save money, by doing as much as he can himself.

If I was doing anything more complicated, I'd want to be able

to check that I was doing it right, but I'm pretty confident

I know what I'm doing.

It's only mixing a bit of concrete and flattening it out a bit.

He is even turning his hand to new skills.

Come on, baby.

ENGINE WHIRRS

But for the major work, Martin cannot avoid hiring

additional labour.

And it is eating through the money his parents have lent him.

I'm trying to negotiate everything down. The floor, for instance,

I got the quote. I had ten minutes on the phone grovelling to him

and I managed to get three or four hundred quid off.

Getting the foundations laid has cost him £10,000.

The floor sets him back another five...

..then it's a whopping £30,000 on the timber frame.

These precision-made panels

are designed to slot together on site in just a few days.

The hope is that spending big money on the frame

will mean he can complete the house more quickly.

Timescale-wise, it enables me to be able to be inside the house

getting plumbing and electrics in, while the external masonry goes up.

It does save quite a lot of time.

The bespoke frame is a massive chunk of Martin's budget,

but he has managed to save on the land.

Complicated planning restrictions actually make backland sites

a godsend for self-builders - often going for half

what you would pay for a normal site.

He managed to acquire this one for £100,000,

following ten years of hard saving and equity from a property deal.

You'll find backland sites all over our towns and cities,

because of the way we have built in the past.

These terraces circle a block and in the heart of that block,

behind all the back gardens, is often a piece of leftover land.

Martin's only way to build a decent-sized house was to find

a plot like this that no-one else wanted.

They are often the only slices

of precious urban land a brave self-builder can afford.

Look at this place. It is, kind of, completely overlooked.

It's really narrow, The site slopes and tapers,

the access is tight and if you're a property developer,

you'd just say, it's not worth it, you'll never make your margin.

And commercial builders are also put off by the lengthy process

of getting planning approval on these awkward bits of land.

It took Martin 18 months of working on the design

before he finally had planning permission granted.

Now, his timber frame is about to be delivered.

Scaffolding surrounds the space where the shell of Martin's house

will be lowered into place.

It's a tense time, which has meant he's had to be away

from his pizza business.

Pretty much been up on site for 12 hours a day,

the last four or five days, just checking stuff,

measuring everything. I'm never 100% confident.

There's always something that can go wrong.

£30,000-worth of flat-packed timber arrives.

A third of Martin's entire budget rolls in on the back of a truck.

Or tries to.

Martin's starting to see some of the problems

of building on a backland plot.

The issue is we've got quite a rather large crane on a rather small site.

It's just a case of trying to work out the best angle for him

to come in, so he can get in down the corner, in the right position.

The scaffolding has to be adjusted for the crane to get in.

Thought we might take off the neighbour's roof, at one point.

But after a bit of manoeuvring, they've managed it

and Martin's house is starting to take shape.

I'm really excited to see the panels here

and how good they look. The whole structure of the house will be seen.

You'll be able to see how it all works together.

I'll see how the rooms feel. It's going to be good.

It's been four months since he started the build,

but it's only now Martin can see the true scale of the task ahead.

Seeing it up here now, it...

It is quite big!

Martin's spent half his parents' money just building this

enormous shell, but the real work starts here.

The finishes needed for the cavernous interior will be

hugely expensive, and he's got just £50,000 left.

Building a house is a really tough challenge.

And I know - I've done it myself with my bare hands.

It can destroy you, it can destroy relationships with your partner,

with your parents, it can really push you to the edge.

After three days, you can make out the shape of the huge

backlands house Martin agreed with the planners.

All Piers can do is sit on his hands,

but he can foresee problems.

How the hell is he going to do this?

It's four times the size of an average semi-detached house.

All I see is pound signs.

Doors are expensive and walls are expensive,

and there's a lot of both of those here.

Martin's faced with a forest of stud walls, corridors

and door openings to finish,

and that means he's going to run out of money.

If he's going to repay his parents, then we'll need to persuade him

to go for a more radical but simpler and cheaper approach.

My parents, I wouldn't say... they're not wealthy people.

I don't like asking for the money.

I'll be borrowing the vast majority of the 100,000 off them, so...

hopefully they won't be struggling.

When I do, obviously, get my mortgage and can pay them back,

then I'll feel a lot better about it.

Traditional finishes like skirting and doors are expensive,

but taking a simpler, pared down approach can save thousands.

And, if it's done right, simple can be beautiful.

I've managed to get access to an incredible building,

Slip House in south London.

It's a perfect example of what you be achieved with a minimal,

open-plan approach to interiors.

It's four times the budget of Martin's house...

..but there are still lessons for him.

There's not a partition wall, door or even a skirting board in sight.

It's so beautiful, so modern, so airy, so light.

It might look like it's expensive to achieve this,

but really it's smoke and mirrors,

and that's what's so good about good design.

Everything's pared back, they've even been brave enough to

make a virtue of leaving things unfinished, which pushes costs down.

This is just polished concrete, it's not even very good concrete.

It's simply finished and polished and it looks great,

reflecting light around the room. It's perfect.

I mean, this is just plywood, it's not at all an expensive material.

And what they've taken is two widths of plywood, stuck them together

to give it a good thickness,

and then painted it with a very light, white wash

to just knock it back, to take that kind of woody, earthy tone out.

And this is the best example of all, for me, it's this wire glass,

this kind of safety glass.

It's probably more familiar to us from industrial buildings.

You know, it's not a luxurious material,

but in this large sheet size and with the light shining through it

from a skylight, it suddenly becomes part of a really luxurious interior.

But, at the end of the day, these useful, inexpensive

but very bold ideas might be hard for Martin to fall in love with.

What I hope we can encourage Martin to do is just to pare back

his partition walls and just allow the space to sing.

While I've been looking at alternative finishes,

Piers has been poring over Martin's plans.

I'm looking for ways to make the spaces better and cheaper.

There are all these bedrooms upstairs that appear not to

benefit in any way from the fact that they are under a nice,

lofty bit of roof with lots of top light coming in.

The worry, of course, is that this is going to be a rabbit warren

and it's going to be dark.

And just by taking out some walls and taking out some doors,

you could save money.

Now it's up to Piers to take the first of our thoughts

on the layout to Martin.

On site in Leeds, help can't come too soon.

It's two months since Martin's frame went up.

He's been working all hours.

He's having to keep his pizza business afloat

while spending every minute he can on site.

And, as if it wasn't hard enough already, Martin's been hit

by a builder's worst enemy - the British weather.

Can't really do any work, to be honest, in this.

You know, water's coming in,

I'm constantly trying to stop water coming in through the windows.

I was on the roof the other day just trying to stop rain getting in.

It's not nice to think that all this water's, you know,

getting everywhere, really.

In addition to the water damage done to the exposed timber structure,

every day lost eats into his parents' money.

I'm feeling a little bit tired, a bit down.

So, obviously knowing Piers is going to come down

and hopefully give me a little bit of advice,

it will raise the spirits and get me a bit more excited again.

He knows that money is drifting through his hands, he knows there's

still a lot to do, and it's very easy to feel a bit depressed now.

-Hi,

-Martin. High, Piers. Pleased to meet you.

-How are you doing?

-Good, thanks. Apart from the weather.

-Yeah, terrible, isn't it?

Martin's planning to take a traditional approach

to fitting out his house interior.

I had in my head, obviously, that I would be doing

a lot of plasterboarding and conventional finishes.

Piers has some radical ideas for the interior that could transform

the space and save money.

Every partition wall he takes out will save Martin cash.

For example, losing one in the master bedroom will give it

a real wow factor and maximise his view.

You know, if you took this wall out, which I think is a no-brainer,

you can imagine having a bed there, being able to lie in bed and see

right the way down past these houses to that amazing view beyond.

If it was me, I think

I'd put my bath right here behind a sliding screen.

You could sit in the bath with a beer at the end of the day,

looking right the way down there.

-How about you do that?

-Kinky.

-I suppose I'd have to waterproof the floor?

-Not necessarily.

-I'm quite messy in the bath, though.

-Are you?

All over the shop.

It looks like Piers may have his work cut out trying to

convince Martin to take a less conventional approach.

Downstairs, Piers wants to get rid of another wall,

allowing a step through from the front door

into a more spacious living area.

You'd lose a door, for one thing, so that's saving money.

You're losing a bit of wall, there's less finishing.

I think also, importantly, you'd come into this space

and immediately you'd feel like you're in a big,

open, lofty, generous building,

rather than in a kind of vestibule to the main space.

But Martin's not sure Leeds is the place for open-plan living.

Unfortunately it is a bit windy and rainy up here.

I don't like the idea of having me sat in my front room

and then someone coming through the front door

and a gust of cold air to come through.

Martin's not convinced. When it comes to the interior design,

he, like many of us, wants to stay traditional and safe.

There is still this mind-set that's incredibly difficult to get out of,

that houses have ordinary walls, ordinary doors, ordinary skirtings,

ordinary finishes like paint and things like that.

But I think, in this country, that's why we lag behind

the rest of the world in doing unusual buildings.

To show Martin a home that will open his mind to new possibilities,

we're taking him on a 200 mile trip

to one of the UK's most stunning self-built houses.

The award-winning Hovering House is in the heart

of the Welsh countryside -

a location that, like Leeds, gets a fair amount of wind and rain.

One of the things I love about this house is the fact that

the routes through it are really kind of exciting and dynamic

and fluid rather than a series of very rigid geometric

corridors that are just at 90 degrees.

And what's a delight here is that

there's nothing at 90 degrees to one another.

But will Martin like such an unconventional interior?

Wow!

At £400,000, the budget to build this house may have been

four times as much as Martin's,

but what Piers wants to show him are the clever design ideas

Martin could steal for free.

This is really just a kind of corridor that links

the kitchen with the living room,

but by taking the doors out and just carrying this material through,

cranking this open a bit, it feels just so much more special.

And you could do this at your place for, actually,

less money than by putting doors in and dividing it up.

You'd end up with something that just felt a lot more interesting

and special than a conventional corridor.

Just being able to see up to another space,

even through a kind of wall of glass a little bit like this.

So if this was your kitchen, just looking up

through that stairwell, up to the upstairs, would just be fantastic.

Definitely, and I like the idea of maybe using some different materials

just to create a focal point in my living area,

because it is such a big space.

And I've got that big wall, so I definitely have to

think about using some different materials to just break the space up.

Yes, they're materials to zone things,

transparency, and then double height space. It's kind of those things.

-And that's almost all you need to do, really.

-Yeah.

There are more ideas to steal in the kitchen.

You know, this stuff is cheap as anything.

You've got endless stud walls in your house

and, actually, just building in little pockets, you know?

That would take you very little time,

-very little money to do something like that.

-It's useful space.

And it's usable space for free, really.

If Martin takes the same approach, he'd avoid

the expense of hiring in skilled labour to get his house finished.

I like the panelling as well.

-It's something I can do myself, for a start.

-Really lovely.

I mean, actually, it acts as a kind of bed head here, you know?

So you can lean against it, you know? It doesn't get stained.

It's just really simple, cheap boarding,

painted with kind of eggshell paint.

It's very similar, this wall, to my main bedroom, as well,

so I can envisage this going on that wall.

And not only does it save me buying a bed head,

or whatever they're called, it just looks really cool as well.

Outside, Martin is inspired by the way they've finished the walls.

I've obviously got a slate roof on part of the house,

and I'm just thinking,

the section above my garage would look absolutely amazing like that.

And I'd prefer to do that instead of rendering, as well, so...

It would look fantastic. Much, much nicer than rendering it.

Slates can cost less than a pound each.

And Martin could put them up himself.

I think it's fantastic that you like this.

I mean, one of the points of bringing you here is to

actually get you inspired by things.

So I'm really excited by the idea of you using this up in Leeds.

Even though it's meant taking a day away from the build,

Martin's been able to see a very different house for himself.

Really useful. It was a long drive down here, but it's been worthwhile.

Obviously you see TV shows and self-build magazines that

I've been reading, but I always think, "Those places don't exist,"

so to walk round, it's absolutely phenomenal.

I've got some really good ideas.

Having seen how he's genuinely reacted, I think

his mind has been kind of blown, you know, coming to a place like this.

I think there's no way he'll just go back to doing conventional

things in a conventional manner at his house in Leeds.

Back in Leeds, Martin's beginning to put what

he saw in Hovering House into action.

I've decided definitely to take this wall out between the two bedrooms.

I'm going to start doing a bit of bashing about.

It's quite enjoyable!

By taking Piers' approach on board, Martin is improving his space

and saving money on finishing.

Even though this is obviously...

I've paid, technically, for this to be built,

it will save me, hopefully, quite a bit of money

by not having to plasterboard it.

But it's clear Martin and Piers are

never going to agree about everything.

Piers wouldn't be happy, though. He wants me to put a bath in this room.

We're in Leeds, man!

Imagine bringing your friends around, going to the pub,

and then they come round and there's a bath in the room?

It's now nearly three months since Martin's frame went up

and the shell of his house has been exposed to the elements ever since.

Builds like these continue to throw up problems.

Hopefully, when all this wind stops blowing through all the house,

and everything's flapping about and all the polythene

I've got on the outside of the window trying to keep it dry, we can get

rid of all that and it will start to look a bit more like a house as well.

But, thankfully, Martin's windows have finally arrived.

With winter on the way, getting the glazing in is essential.

We'll be, hopefully, watertight soon, which is good,

because the weather's turning quite dramatically.

Hopefully in a couple of days, it'll feel like an actual home

instead of just a building, a bit of an empty shell.

But because he's building on a backland plot, he's had to

have narrow windows specially made to protect his neighbours' privacy.

All this non-standard glazing comes at a price,

devouring more than 10% of his budget.

Even worse, I'm worried that less glass

will mean that the rooms will be dark.

To try to make sure this doesn't happen in Martin's house,

I've come to see a house that faced similar problems.

Squeezed into a tight spot in the suburbs of London...

..it's been cleverly designed to maximise all available light.

The strict rules governing this tight backlands plot

mean you can't directly overlook neighbouring homes.

They could have ended up with a dreadful dark dungeon.

They have to get some light in somewhere.

Here you see these two huge expanses of glazing,

which are the two places where you can't see anyone.

This is the main lounge,

huge double French door looking out to this small garden

that's been carved out of this site.

Here, another huge expanse of glass

shielded by a cleverly designed screen.

When you're in there, you can't see into anybody else's garden.

If Martin can pull off the same kind of trick,

he should be able to achieve bright, light spaces -

even in his difficult location.

In Leeds, Martin is trying to maximise light

by opting for fully glazed bi-folding doors

that open on to his small, south-facing garden.

Here, no-one is directly overlooked.

By opening out his bedroom as Piers suggested,

Martin can gain even more light.

Finally getting the windows in feels like a major step forward.

They might be costly, but it's money well spent.

It does actually feel a bit more real as opposed to just

you're slogging away, there's wind coming in, rain coming in,

whereas I could sit in here now on a warm day.

I mean, it's a big part of the budget obviously,

it's like 11 or 12% of the budget, so they're obviously a big deal

the windows and it's good to have 'em in.

And with well over half of his £100K spent,

he faces his next big decision -

the material for the exterior of the walls,

and that's going to have another major impact on the budget.

With the outside, you only have one opportunity to get the right stone,

or the right type of cladding, spend a bit more on things

that will be there for quite a while that you can't change after.

The houses closest to Martin's are built in traditional local stone.

To fit in, he's using natural Yorkshire sandstone

for his largest wall - but it's not cheap.

And he's overspent on the labour needed to work the stone.

Where I thought I'd probably spend three to four thousand,

it's probably cost nearer six labour-wise.

Martin's covering other external walls with heat-treated timber.

It's quite expensive to bake it,

so it's resistant to rot basically, so no water can get in.

It smells really nice, it actually smells like burnt wood.

Martin is haemorrhaging money on this exterior,

but with such a limited pot

I'm worried whether he's spending it in the right places.

He's really invested some money here,

this natural material - stone and timber -

looks good, but rings alarm bells

because you know those things cost him a bit more than he was planning.

What does that leave for the interior,

is my worry? You know, how much has he spent making this

beautiful envelope and what's going to be able to be afforded?

We have managed to save him money with one of his material choices.

I think it's been a brilliant decision that

Piers has managed to influence this building

and have this slate instead of the render.

This looks so much more bespoke,

it looks so much more crisp,

it's going to be impervious to the weather,

it's going to be great.

By hanging most of the slate himself,

Martin avoided paying to render the walls - and saved himself hundreds.

-Well, you've got a front door.

-Yeah.

But inside, he hasn't taken out the wall between the hallway

and the kitchen, which could have saved him money on finishes.

I know Piers was very passionate about me opening all this up,

taking out the doors there, et cetera,

but I just thought practically when people are coming in and out

and obviously it can be quite cold.

I guess what you're saying is us Jessie southerners

can't possibly understand northern drafts?

Don't get me wrong, it would be totally amazing to walk in

and not have a wall there, have a bath in the front room.

There's only so far you're willing to go.

What if I put a door line on here

and just left if open for a bit?

I'll move in while I'm finishing stuff off.

-I'll give it a try, see what it's like.

-Do that.

This compromise would save him

a couple of hundred pounds on a door and retain the sense of space.

He's been able to make additional vital savings

himself on his kitchen.

I managed to get a second-hand kitchen for £500 so far,

but I've got to obviously buy bits

and pieces extra to stick it together.

Every one likes a bargain, don't we?

Financial pressures have prompted him to consider bringing

the creativity he used outside, to the interior as well.

This wall, I had an idea, when the guys were slating the roof

they had a lot of offcuts of slate, so I'm thinking about using all

-those offcuts and having a slate wall on this side.

-Wow.

With slate planned as part of the downstairs decor,

I'm wondering what he's got in mind for upstairs.

So, obviously, I've got my staircase in now.

Yeah. That's progress.

I'm impressed with the sense of space that's been created

by losing one of his interior walls.

It's going to be fantastically airy and...

I'm going to have a couch here. TV on the wall.

Bedroom on this side.

You won't want to leave this room,

it's so beautiful with all this light.

But upstairs I'm shocked by how much still needs to done.

Every single one of these stud walls needs finishing

and in a conventional way that will cost thousands of pounds alone.

How much money have you got left to do this interior?

Let me see.

KIERAN LAUGHS

-£1.50.

-I can lend you a couple more.

He can still joke about it,

but Martin really has reached situation critical

with his £100,000.

He only has £20K of his parents' life savings left to finish,

but completing a house this size could cost double that.

I've literally just watched every penny.

It's the worst aspect of the whole thing, if I'm honest.

It's probably...it's probably taken a bit of the enjoyment off it.

He has never taken this loan on lightly.

I need to be able to get a mortgage, you know, to pay them back,

so that's always in the back of my mind as well.

Over the next few weeks, things go from bad to worse,

miserable winter weather means the city centre is quiet,

and he hardly shifts any pizzas.

Even if I earn 40, £50 a day, it's better than nothing.

It's obviously very tight and I'm spending money just to live really.

Already struggling to build a house,

he's now struggling to run a business.

A good example is this morning I needed to go to get some

drinks cos I sell drink, but I don't have any cash in my account.

A lot of the money my parents have given me,

I think I've spent on things like rent and stuff for the business

and all sorts.

Just trying to do as much as I can really.

And they're running out of the money they'd scraped together to lend.

The house remains deserted and unfinished.

I do know that I'm going to the bank tomorrow

to put some more money in his account.

The budget, it doesn't always quite come under budget.

Sometimes it's usually slightly over, it's never under.

With Martin's project at its most critical point,

Piers is off to Leeds -

having survived the ups and downs of his own house build -

he's the perfect person to spur Martin on and get the build going.

This is a fantastic space,

-but there's a hell of a lot to do in here.

-Oh, yeah.

My concern is that you won't have the money or the time

and it could just drift on for years.

Now barely able to afford even his rent, it's vital we help Martin to

complete a few key rooms quickly and cheaply so that he can move in.

I think you could finish this building by being clever about

where you get materials.

The danger is you move in and nothing happens,

or you spend more money over a long time doing something very

conventionally like plasterboard.

That would be the death of this place.

I have been looking at various alternatives. But if we can try

and find somewhere I can get a lot of this stuff for next to nothing,

then that's definitely something of interest,

especially when I'm literally like at the end of my budget.

I really want to find an interesting alternative to plasterboard,

and I want to find an interesting alternative that allows Martin

not to have to fix something, then plaster something,

then decorate something.

And I think I may have tracked down the perfect option.

Metal.

Metal, as a material, I think is completely underused.

I think we can sometimes think of metal as a cold material,

as something that's kind of icy and too modern,

but I think here you start to see its qualities.

Where better to come than the incredible home of

a metalwork artist in Bermondsey.

It's a material that takes some know-how to work,

but I'm confident if we can get it cheaply,

that with a bit of practice Martin could use it for his walls.

The whole atmosphere is about how metal goes together,

how it can block the light, how it can allow light through it,

real creativity with a single, simple, cheap material.

I think what Piers and I would like Martin to look at is

materials that have a story to them, maybe they're reclaimed materials,

or maybe - like in this case -

there's just that beautiful patina of the galvanising process

that adds so much quality to it.

And Piers has heard about a site where he might be able to get

exactly what Martin needs in bulk - and hopefully cheap.

It's an old BBC transmission station that's being effectively demolished

and all the materials put aside for either scrapping or recycling.

I want to scavenge as much interesting sheet material

as we can possibly get for Martin

to be at least able to line the whole of his bedroom

and perhaps part of that upstairs hall.

I just can't bear the idea of it being a plasterboard city.

This is Rampisham Down in Dorset.

Having transmitted BBC World Service programmes for the past 70 years,

it's now going to be developed into a renewable energy park.

What an amazing place, it's so dramatic to see this stuff.

Low cost self-building requires radical thinking,

and places like this can be a source of unique materials,

and even ready-made structures, often for little cash at all.

This stuff is worthless, it's just been chucked here.

But the potential to use this stuff in buildings is immense,

priceless to a self-builder,

it's absolutely priceless.

This looks incredible

and I would love to be able to use this in a building somehow.

I suspect we can't fit this in Martin's house,

let alone persuade Martin to put it into his house,

but actually a lot of the other stuff here we could use.

I can imagine using that on a whole wall,

this beautiful, shiny tiled material I think would look incredible.

These things are great too.

I can imagine using this instead of ceramic tiles.

Among the material destined for scrap,

Piers finds other unlikely gems.

This tension wire has no commercial value,

it's just been chucked in a pile to be skipped,

but I think that Martin could use this to make a handrail out of.

These things are beautiful and so fantastically engineered

compared to a horrid beige plastic extractor shroud or something.

But it's the massive ducts made of heavy-duty aluminium sheeting

that really catch his eye.

I think Martin could use this flat sheet material

to line a wall with.

It doesn't need finishing, it doesn't need painting,

it doesn't need any fire retardant, it's robust, it's beautiful.

This is what we've come for, to get some of this.

This is exactly the stuff, it looks in good condition.

Big flat areas,

the couple over there would be great as big long ones.

This is absolutely perfect.

This is what Martin's bedroom ceiling could look like.

And I think that's priceless, it's fantastic.

This or magnolia, what would you choose?

I'd choose this. I hope Martin does.

The danger of course is

we turn up to Martin's place with a van full of this

and he looks at it and hates it,

but that's a risk worth taking I think.

Piers got to the site in the nick of time.

So, if we'd come here tomorrow, that would have gone probably?

Yeah, it would have been.

If you need it, you can have it as it is.

A couple of days later, our free wall covering arrives in Leeds.

But what will Martin make of it?

I was actually trying to tidy my garden up.

HE CHUCKLES

I don't quite know what I'm going to do with it,

but Piers is on his way up to apparently make that look good.

I thought it'd be plain sheets as opposed to broken-down chimneys

or whatever it is!

He's struggling to see why Piers is so excited about it.

Bit of an eyesore, innit?

HE CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY

I'm not convinced at the minute but we'll see, won't we?

So, will Piers be able to convince Martin

that metal sheeting is the solution for his partition walls?

It needs a bit of a clean up.

A bit of a clean up?

Let's have a go at just cleaning it up with this and seeing

how it comes up.

-See, that is quite nice.

-Yeah.

And that's, you know, a minute. So five minutes per sheet.

With Martin still not persuaded,

Piers takes him to look at the sheets in position upstairs.

So, if I hold that there, you get a sense now...

I think this wall, if you do it right up to there,

would look fantastic in this stuff.

When I first saw the stuff piled in the back garden,

I just thought it looked like a load of junk,

but once it starts to look like, you know,

that it might fit together and form some sort of panelling,

then, yeah, I can see there could be something there.

Now, we've put the two panels together, obviously we can see

it's pretty easy to sand down. I think it could look really good.

I think I'll be OK to work out how to put it up as well.

My mum and dad won't like it.

Piers hopes it's mission accomplished.

By the time I come and see Martin's house next,

I'm hoping that this stuff will be upstairs, beautifully polished,

on his wall, fixed in a nice arrangement, looking great.

Martin is on the final push to get into his house.

His dad is on hand to help.

That's what dads do, in't it? They like to keep an eye on them.

But with the budget at its end, he'll have to continue

to be open-minded and use less conventional materials,

like these leftover slates, in place of expensive ones.

So, what are you doing?

You're plasterboarding the roof and tiling the inside?!

LAUGHTER

I like wallpaper.

Anaglypta.

LAUGHTER

He needs to avoid trades like plastering,

and instead use the skills of the people he has available.

It's not just the walls.

Martin needs to keep thinking of other ingenious, inexpensive

and unconventional finishes if he's going to complete the house,

but what will it end up looking like?

Maybe he's finally ready to tackle the metal.

Been wondering what the hell I was going to do with it.

So I'm just going to give it a go.

The whole point of this is to have it...to look as it is.

Just cut this section out...

on each one.

What's the finish going to be anyway?

That. That's it.

18 months ago, Martin Whyment couldn't raise a mortgage

to buy a decent-sized home.

So he bought some land once used for lock-up garages

and with a loan of £100,000 from his mum and dad,

he set about building his own home.

Now it's time for Piers and I to pay our final visit,

but what will it look like?

-Hi,

-Martin. How are you doing?

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you.

-How are you doing?

-Yeah, good.

-It looks like a building.

-Looks great!

Despite using three different natural materials on the exterior,

Martin's actually been able to save money.

It's an amazing achievement,

especially with these expensive materials and so on.

You've put a lot of effort yourself into keeping the costs down.

When you look at different materials,

things like, originally I was looking at rendering this wall,

but by the time you get the labour costs,

I managed to slate a lot of that,

so I think if you can do a bit more yourself,

that's where you can save the money.

Martin began with a staggeringly ambitious plan.

We suggested he try less orthodox designs

that could also save him money.

Did he decide to run with our ideas?

So this is the living room.

This is just great.

What an amazing space.

Thank you.

I really like the way you've embraced the idea of

natural materials on the interior.

You've really tried to push yourself and get that right.

I took the inspiration for this wood from the house we went to visit.

I just absolutely loved it when I saw it.

This really hangs together and it really unifies this space.

I wasn't sure whether I'd used it a bit too much,

but I think it brings the three areas together really nicely.

Instead of spending money he didn't have on plastering the walls,

Martin has clad them in timber and off-cuts of slate

from the exterior cladding of the house.

I also particularly like the way you've embraced timber

in another form with this pallet. Tell me about this amazing table.

I'm being totally honest, this is my most prized possession.

-It is?

-Yeah.

Actually, that was delivered with some plasterboard.

I just saw it in the garage

and I thought, "I've not got a coffee table."

So I brought it in here, stuck some legs on it and hey presto.

I don't know whether I do it slightly to annoy my dad

because as soon as he sees this, he's like,

"The best place for that is on the fire in the garden," type thing.

I really like the floor. I hope this is the finish.

I didn't intend it on being the finish.

It was a bit of a mistake to be honest. I painted it

temporarily but actually I quite like it now.

I've sanded it down. It looks a little bit patchy.

But I've grown to really like it, actually. It's interesting.

It's full of character.

This is the sort of thing that you would see in a New York loft.

By opting for just a concrete floor, Martin saved on the cost

of labour and floor covering, without compromising on style.

So, the kitchen, Martin.

I mean, I know that you didn't spend a lot of money on this,

but tell me how much you would say this whole kitchen cost you.

I think including the sink and the oven and hob,

I think we were looking at 1,300 quid.

That's a cheap kitchen, isn't it?

To keep costs down, Martin found ex-display units for around £500,

and tracked down imaginative

but low cost materials for the finishing touches.

You know, things like that splashback,

you could go and buy that from a kitchen place and it would be £70.

I phoned a metal worker and said,

"Have you got a sheet of aluminium?" and he cut it and it was £10.

It's nice to know you're getting it for as cheap a value as possible.

But obviously to make sure I'm happy with it as well, and I am.

Keeping out the wind and rain was a big priority for Martin,

so when Piers suggested he open up the hallway, he got a flat refusal,

but it seems Martin has come up with his own compromise.

I remember we had a little battle over here.

I wanted you to leave this wall out. But this looks great like this.

Coming in and seeing straight through is really, really nice

and it makes it seem much bigger.

When I open the door now and see all the way through,

there's no way I would want to ever put a door on and change that now.

When the timber frame was first erected,

the upstairs was a dark forest of stud walls.

So Martin took down a partition,

opened up the space to allow light to pour in, and made more savings.

But how does it look now?

-What a fantastic space this has turned into.

-Thank you.

Look at this height and the natural light

from all these different directions.

It's really beautiful.

Making the decision to lose a bedroom was quite big,

but I think now I'm in here and it's such a wow factor

for people to come in. And when people see it,

it's just a lot more special really,

so I'm really, really pleased that I did that.

Probably the best decision I've made so far.

He's even found his own way to clad one entire wall in metal.

I wasn't sure about it probably until the point where

I actually put the last couple of pieces on.

When I first heard Piers talk about the idea of the metal

and when it got delivered, I thought, "This is not going to work."

My dad thought it was ridiculous. But now it's on, I love it.

I love the character.

I've started using the worst pieces

to get a bit of character within the centre of it.

I did it as a bit of a patchwork,

which is probably a bit different from what we discussed.

I'm incredibly pleased to see this wall here.

At times, I doubted that Martin would do this

but we can't underestimate

just what a huge leap Martin has taken to use a material like this.

He's come from a conventional house-building background.

He's building an unconventional house and he's using

a radically unconventional material here - in his bedroom.

But he hasn't taken all our suggestions on board.

What I'd hoped to see was a bath in this corner instead of a drum kit.

Imagine being able to bathe and look down here.

I'm trying not to imagine you bathing in it!

I'm sure the neighbours are, too!

I don't know, I think that was

probably one step far for me, to be honest.

-But the drum kit works.

-No, this is good, yeah.

The house is a fantastic home for a young man to face the future,

but achieving these results has been far from easy.

It has been hard. It's been harder than I thought it would be.

It's taken longer than I thought it would.

Obviously I'm split between doing this and the business,

and it's been stressful in terms of trying to keep an eye on everything.

I was constantly worried about it, do you know what I mean?

I was constantly worried.

Not just financially but, you know, just general, just stress.

But has it been worth it?

Has he been able to do all this for £100,000?

Tell me again what your original budget was,

what you thought you'd build this for and where you are now?

I've spent probably 102,000 now.

Martin borrowed his parents' life savings to build this house,

so is the bank finally prepared to give him a loan?

I've been able to apply for a mortgage,

so I'm just waiting for the survey to go through.

Hopefully I'll be able to pay them a bit of money back.

-That must be so satisfying.

-Yeah, it is.

It's nice to get that out of the way.

Does it feel like a home now?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

I'm surprised really, to be honest, how homely it feels.

So I hope that other people feel that when they come as well.

The big gamble has paid off.

The house has an estimated market value of around £400,000.

It's finally time to celebrate.

One of those projects where you see it from the start on paper

and you think it's never going to happen.

You see it now and you think, "Wow!"

I like it.

I think it's very Martin and different. A bit of texture. Nice.

I'd love one like this, yeah. Of course I would.

It's four times the size of my place.

When I saw the plans and we looked at it, we thought,

"Wow, what is this?"

It looked like an old folk's home, a dentist's surgery or whatever,

but I think it far outweighs what I expected.

I didn't think it would look as good as it does.

What did you first think

when he started putting tiles on the wall and bits of metal on the wall?

When he told me it was for the wall, I just couldn't believe it,

but now I've seen it, I do quite like it.

The more I look at it, the more, yeah, I do like it.

Of course I keep forgetting that this building cost £100,000.

This feels like a special, interesting piece of architecture

and I had to keep pinching myself

and reminding that this only cost £100,000.

I think the big lessons from Martin's build are really about

courage and courage of your convictions.

And I think that Martin has the best of both worlds now.

He has a house that he really believes in,

that I think is a good contribution to its site,

but it also, internally, really reflects Martin.

It's definitely his house. It couldn't be anybody else's.

I believe he'll live there for a very long time as a result.

I think it really makes me feel at home.

I'm really pleased with what I've achieved.

I've obviously still got bits and pieces left to finish off and

I can sit back and really be pleased, and chill out,

and get back to a normal life, and be proud of what me and my dad

and my mum have done, yeah.

Thank you very much.

Next time - a widowed cookery teacher finds herself homeless,

with just £50,000 to build a new house.

I haven't got the time to cry.

But when she rapidly finds herself out of her depth...

I don't know who to go to for what.

..will her new home even get built at all?

If Sumati doesn't understand what she's doing, take control,

there isn't going to be a house.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd