Andrew and Claire The House That £100k Built

We're in the midst of a low-cost, self-build revolution.

-Huh!

-We're building walls!

It's harder than ever to get onto the housing ladder, so a few brave,

ordinary people are resorting to the seemingly impossible...

This gets the adrenaline going.

..building their own home from scratch for less than £100K.

If we try to buy a house with that space, we couldn't afford it.

Architect Piers Taylor and me, Kieran Long, are back,

and coming to the aid of six families attempting

this toughest of challenges.

It's difficult looking at the budget

-and your bank account just literally going down.

-Yeah.

We'll try to help them with design dilemmas.

You arrive at a blank wall. I mean, is this what you want?

Challenge them to think bigger.

It just inspires me to want to go home and crack on with it.

And search out innovative solutions that make

the most of their meagre budgets.

Whoa, look at that.

We'll all be pushed to the limit...

Oh, no!

..as we attempt to turn these ordinary self builds

into outstanding homes.

If anyone thinks it's easy, they're an idiot!

This time...

Andrew and Claire dream of building a modern farmhouse...

Look at that! 40 minutes to this stage.

..but will they end up with a glorified mobile home...

It's really important that we all realise what we're building.

..and in financial ruin?

We've got over £10,000 of credit cards now.

It's something I feel very, very uncomfortable about.

Andrew and Claire have ditched their jobs

and gambled everything they have on a brave new start, but

they still don't have the one thing they really need - a family home.

Pretty much everything that we had has been spent

in establishing the farm.

I was in the garden centre industry.

It was very frantic, very busy, very stressful.

This has its moments, but it's a very relaxed, very informal,

very calming way of making a living.

Come on, let's go and feed those animals.

In life, if you don't take a chance, nothing's ever going to happen.

We could be two people living in a normal street with normal jobs,

but I don't think that would make either of us happy.

There's a goose egg!

Andrew inherited eight acres of Berkshire farmland from his

mother, and three years ago, their huge dream began to take shape.

When we first had the first batch of 2,000 hens delivered,

I'd literally never held a chicken before in my life.

So it was all new to me.

Andrew has been married with kids before...

Right. Who's hungry?

..but found a new start with Claire.

She was a single mum to Tallulah and a townie -

working in the business world.

My idea of going back to nature was to stay in a budget hotel.

Together, they had their son, Edward, and have spent every waking

minute striving to make their fledgling business a success.

Morning, girls.

But with 5,000 chickens laying a million and a half eggs a year,

it's hard work.

It's seven days a week, 365 days a year. Early mornings,

late nights, locking the birds up and things like that.

So living on the site is a must.

With no existing farmhouse, the only option is to live in a caravan.

This is the dining room, office and kitchen.

We're all very on top of each other.

You can't really escape.

Tallulah's bedroom.

We can't open wardrobes. That's the washing facilities for all of us.

When we're really cold or if we want a bath,

Andy and I do actually sit in there. Cross-legged.

Trying to pretend that we're in a bath.

Andrew and Claire have risked all their money on building

the life they dreamt of.

They have the plot but very little cash left, so they've staked

the farm against a mortgage to finance the entire build.

One... One, eight, nine, ten.

So much has been invested, both financially and emotionally.

There is no turning back.

The only plan we have is to build a house here

and, you know, spend the rest of our lives here.

To comply with planning laws, Andrew and Claire's house must be

easily removable from the site if their farm business fails.

In just one evening, they sketched a design for an incredibly

basic single-storey home.

The frame sits on 15 concrete pads instead of conventional foundations.

The outside will be chalet-like,

clad in treated wood with metal tiles on the roof.

Inside, one half will be a large, open-plan kitchen/diner

with one structural support post in the middle.

The other rooms will be down a long, windowless corridor -

including a small office, bathroom, two kids' rooms,

and at the very end, Andrew and Claire's bedroom.

I'm worried they haven't designed a house -

just a bigger version of the caravan they've already got.

-Hi.

-Hi there.

-How you doing?

-Good.

Their plot is an exposed site in the middle of their farm.

They are financing the build entirely via a loan,

so how much are they expecting it to cost?

What's going to be the budget of this?

The builder has said, for 60 grand, he will build it.

We've allowed ten to do a bit of ground work.

That brings us up to 70.

And what kind of contingency have you got in the budget for mishaps?

-There won't be any.

-Really?

You really can't afford for a single thing to go wrong on this build.

How far away are you from moving into this building, do you think?

-From moving in or starting?

-From moving in. When's the end?

I think the end of the summer, I would like to be in.

I think that is achievable with a fair wind.

Yeah, I mean, the end of the summer is clearly October.

-Yes.

-Clearly not. Clearly not.

With late summer just a few months away, this build is going to

move fast - the frame could go up in a matter of days.

Piers and I urgently need to help them make a family farmhouse,

not just an upmarket mobile home in a field.

Andrew and Claire have a real job on to deliver a good building, I think.

They have a building that has to be semi-temporary.

How do you make this building feel permanent

and not feel like a caravan?

Enjoy it for what it is, and what it is is a beautiful shed.

And we need to really explode this myth that agricultural sheds

aren't beautiful. The big lofty spaces,

the simple use of materials that are fixed together economically.

They need to make a virtue out of economy and really look at

materials that are cheap. So sheet material,

profile metal, those sorts of things.

The danger is they'll clad this in an expensive material

because they think it'll make it better.

To me, this building is not designed at all

and they desperately need help.

What separates this from a good building

is actually quite a fine line.

Spaces like corridors need a certain amount of generosity

where people linger and gather and move into spaces,

so this is the most lazy form of long corridor here.

One of the most bizarre features is this structural column

in the middle of the living space which seems completely redundant.

Completely redundant.

But then focus on how you can make this building a beautiful

agricultural building in landscape and don't try

and make it into a bungalow.

The frame will go up in just a few days, so we need to act now

and challenge every element of the home they are creating.

-This is it?

-This is it.

What would be great, in fact, is just to mock up what you've

designed at the moment so I can just understand

the implications of - what does it mean to have a front

door on the side of the prevailing wind, what do you look at,

how do you know when people are arriving, all those sorts of things.

Where does the kitchen sink go?

Those sorts of things would be really, really useful.

Where's that mallet gone?

The best way to get Andrew and Claire to experience the home

they've designed is to get them to build it.

Against the front door.

OK, let's go in the front door then, yeah.

So there is this slightly odd thing for me

walking past everyone's bedrooms to get in.

The interesting thing for me is that Andrew and Claire haven't had

this conversation, whereas I would expect everybody to

get to the stage where they're about to build a house, a house

that they're spending significant amounts of money on, I would

expect them to unpick all of it and work out where does the prevailing

wind come from, how do I get in and what about the look and the feel.

We're going to have the kitchen there.

It's a big journey of discovery

realising that small changes to buildings

and houses make a huge difference.

And this is your study in here, isn't it?

Generally, one tries to minimise the amount of corridor.

Here you're spending five grand to make that

and you can only use it to get from A to B.

There are other ways of dividing up rooms.

Andrew and Claire's planning permission is for a long,

narrow building - 20 metres by 6.4 metres.

That can't change, so it's crucial to plan the interior spaces well.

The simple move of re-thinking this wall would be a really good one,

so that was perhaps a more generous arrival into this area.

Just that one move makes this corridor seem much less long.

Simply changing the angle of the study wall

simultaneously opens up the corridor and the living area.

It's a kind of gateway into the rest of the house.

-And it's interesting.

-I think it's a great idea.

-Was that my idea?

-Yep, that was your idea!

LAUGHTER

Should you move your bedroom door, in fact, to there, you know,

so you enter straight into your bedroom?

That creates more space, yeah.

A small adjustment to the position of the master bedroom door

also reduces the length of the corridor.

And, for me, going up and down this corridor

would then be a pleasure.

I think, for me, it's critical that you start to look at these

things now because your building is going to be

unfolding at a rate of knots in front of your eyes.

Piers's ideas have several advantages.

Angling the wall between the living room

and study will shorten the corridor,

increase the sense of space in the main living area and save money.

Changing the position of the door at the other end of the corridor

will add interest and make the master bedroom feel more generous.

By carefully interrogating the construction now,

they should also make every effort to remove the structural column

which dominates the open-plan space.

Yeah, I love that idea. Absolutely love it.

It's been nice to re-assess what we're actually building.

It's actually made it come to life a bit more

looking at it and making those final changes.

It actually feels like we're doing it. We're going to have a house!

With some of Piers's major alterations included,

construction begins.

The simple timber frame means rapid progress.

40 minutes to this stage

Half a house in 40 minutes!

And again.

-That's it.

-Use me arse instead.

Andrew and Claire are saving around £90 per day on labour

by helping Kevin, the builder, whenever possible.

Ah, look at that!

We're about 2mm out over 20 meters.

Cor, that moved a bit.

At 128 square meters,

the house will be nearly 70% larger than the average new build home.

Just look how tiny the caravan looks.

Which means when we move in there, it's going to feel...

-You could probably fit that caravan in there.

-Twice.

-No, four times.

-Four, times, yeah.

-Easily four times.

Let's have a cup of tea.

But the build could soon grind to a halt.

There's been a complication with the paperwork that defines

the boundaries of the land, so the mortgage funds Andrew

and Claire desperately need have not been released.

The risk that we've taken is that we've started

the project before having the money in place.

But we just couldn't sit back any longer.

I was going absolutely mad.

I've applied for a few credit cards

and we've got over £10,000 of credit cards now.

It's something I feel very, very uncomfortable about.

In order to keep Kevin on site, we need to keep him fed with

materials. I think we need about £15,000 in the next fortnight really,

otherwise it will grind to a halt.

I'm getting more and more agitated

and anxious about the money situation.

With their finances on such a knife edge, they could easily blow this

chance to get the beautiful, modern farmhouse they are desperate for.

I want to help them keep that vision uppermost in their minds

as they make design decisions in the weeks ahead.

So I've brought you to Suffolk

because we're going to see a building I love.

I think it can teach lots of lessons about how to keep a consistent

vision internally and externally. So let's go and take a look.

Excellent.

Set in the rural landscape of Suffolk, Long Farm is the

award-winning home of architect Lucy Marston,

completed just three years ago.

I think the most important thing is this is a modern farmhouse,

which is what you're trying to create, really.

What do you think when you see this?

It looks stunning. It really looks beautiful.

I can see it's a grander version of what we're trying to achieve.

The build cost £560,000, so it is on much grander scale,

but as a long, narrow, unfussy building, I think

it holds vital lessons for Andrew and Claire in creating

a beautiful, modern, rural home connected to its surroundings.

I think the most obvious thing that makes this building feel it's

part of its context is just the simple form of this box,

one-room-deep, with a pitched roof,

which just echoes all of the barns

and other pitched-roof buildings around it.

But also, materially, this beautiful brick wall and English garden

wall bond and then oak, they're the only two materials really

you've got going on here.

And the oak is weathering to a beautiful silver.

Even a house like this has to be built to a budget.

To help stick to it, the architect has chosen ordinary materials,

such as the bricks and timber frame that any house-builder might use.

But she's then focused on putting them

together in a bespoke way - to amazing effect.

-So come in.

-Wow.

'Inside, there's a lesson in tackling the design challenges of

'long, thin houses like Andrew and Claire's.'

It's really interesting that this is a double-loaded corridor,

a corridor with no windows, rooms in both directions.

You normally desperately try to avoid that as a designer,

but actually, it doesn't feel murky here.

I think combining this joinery in that dark green with the white above

it and the view out to the distance means that even a

double-loaded corridor here just has so much quality.

It's quite a difficult thing to do, but they've really solved that here.

The polished concrete is fantastic.

You get the shine off the light of the far window.

You could have lino or resin or ceramics or any

number of materials of wide variety of prices that could give

some of the qualities of light and reflection that this has.

I thought of the hallway as just a means to get to the bedrooms.

I hadn't even thought of it as a, you know, a room.

The balustrade separates the stairs from the hallway.

I mean, it's so chunky.

That's probably four inches by two. It's really, really nice.

And adds a sense of depth and space to the hall.

Vertical timbers inside and out give a consistency.

It looks a similar size to ours, actually.

Large glazing panels frame the views

and muted colours echo the landscape.

One of the things that makes it so homely here is this hearth.

And it is lovely.

I think the really special thing is down here,

where you see that the brickwork of this extends out,

beyond the glazing. So when you're stood where you are,

you can see this brick piece is one thing.

It's almost extending that brick from the exterior inside.

That's something you guys could really think about.

Every detail has been carefully considered

to create a warm family home.

I think today has been a real inspiration

to get an idea of what our house can actually feel like.

That it's that whole modern farmhouse but giving you

that warm hug as you walk in.

It really makes you just open up your eyes.

And sometimes it's about the detail, which

we're so busy, we haven't had an opportunity to do.

As the house continues to grow, so too does the credit card debt,

and it's starting to affect progress.

-Hi, Andrew. Hi, Claire.

-Hello, Piers.

-How are you doing?

Good to see you. So how's it all going?

Things are tough at the moment, aren't they?

Actually, we are having to sort of...

It would be quite nice to get the windows in.

But that's 10% of the budget. So we are holding off on that.

We are buying and we are doing jobs

that are relatively cheap to do, really.

I can't wait to see what you've been doing.

Wow, this is great.

There are also design issues to confront.

Space in the main living area will be freed up by replacing

the pillar with a truss.

But it has had an impact on Piers's idea for the study wall.

Give me my bearings. This?

This is the wall that was going to curve round.

But we need it to support the joist.

Andrew and Claire have a big design challenge ahead

to partition the study and living area,

without losing the sense of space.

Every decision made on site now will determine whether this becomes

a unique, contemporary farmhouse or a mobile home lookalike.

Very nice. Hi there.

Hello there.

-How are you doing?

-Very well.

It's Piers's first chance to talk to Kevin, the builder.

This is looking good.

And he's curious to hear Kevin's take on creating a sense

of permanence in a home that's technically removable.

It's still built on a scheme of a mobile home,

so it can be split in the middle.

Remember though, this isn't a mobile home,

this is a house that just has to be able to be removed.

It's a subtly different thing. And I think it wants to

be as different from a mobile home as it can possibly be.

-Absolutely!

-Completely.

That's all right by me. As long as we're allowed to do that,

we've got the plans and everything,

and I just build it from what's been passed on the plans.

Absolutely. What's the next phase for you?

Well, I was hoping to get all these purlins across by the end

of today and the back gable ends up.

Then we can put the soffits and the fascia boards on the outside.

I think the word fascia and soffit fills me with horror.

-Does it?

-And makes me come out in hives

because that is the language of a mobile home.

Whereas rural buildings don't have fascias or soffits.

They have very neat clipped eaves.

It's really important that we all realise what we're building

and just make sure every detail is considered perfectly.

You don't want to build a building with a fascia board

and an eaves because if you do, it'll look like a mobile home.

Whereas I think if you don't, if you build a really clever eaves

with a clipped gutter, it'll look like the most beautiful timber barn.

Mmmm.

Well, we can...

-Cancel that order!

-LAUGHTER

The detail that may bring Piers out in hives is an important one.

Mobile homes, chalets and temporary buildings are built

in the most conventional ways.

An inexpensive roof material sits on top of supporting walls

with a boxed in soffit

and fascia board to fill the gap.

But Piers wants Andrew and Claire to expose the rafters.

He also suggests using a hardwearing yet delicate material

such as corrugated metal for the roof.

These ideas will help make their home feel designed

and unique rather than off-the-peg.

It sounds like a tiny point.

And it's so tiny in some ways that you can't even visualise it.

But in a way, it's such a huge point for how a building looks,

how it reads, all the subliminal messages it gives out about

where it belongs and what it is.

Is it a bungalow or a mobile home or a beautiful, considered,

contemporary piece of rural architecture?

But the bigger question for me is

every single one of these relationships

that exists all around the building -

who is driving them, controlling them, considering them,

drawing them, weighing up the pros and cons?

HE GIGGLES

Everyone's looking around for that person!

In your hands, is the potential to make a really good building here.

Details seem inconsequential, but actually,

they're part of really how you read and understand a building.

Even if you can't articulate why.

I'm pleased that you've raised it because you can get really busy

doing the stuff without worrying about the detail.

It's more the details.

I didn't know what soffits and everything were.

I was just like, "Oh, yeah, whatever."

For me, the buildings that you've put up at the moment, so far,

are fine. But they, in a way, feel slightly too temporary.

Whereas now there is a real opportunity to speak of permanence.

This building will be here for a long time.

Your children will have this building.

I think that's a important thing to hang on to.

Invest in the future, not for just three years.

Despite all the pressures on them,

Andrew and Claire are very open to learning more.

So this is it.

With big decisions to make on exterior materials,

Andrew is intrigued by a building he's spotted in a local vineyard,

and he's asked Claire and Piers to take a look.

When I saw this a few weeks ago, I really liked the silvery feel to it.

The colour is really nice. I like it a lot.

The storehouse at Wolf Oak Vineyard was designed by the owner,

together with his joiner, and cost £45,000.

You need to get away from anything that looks like a garden shed

and garden sheds are very thin timber.

I think if you used the same timber but you actually beef it up

so that it's inch boarding or something.

This is a really good simple building that isn't over designed.

It sits well in the landscape. I think this is beautiful.

But is this going to fit nicely?

I guess I can't see it at the moment, how it's...

I too struggle with how it will fit in,

but I'm looking at the rural setting, and it doesn't look dreadful.

To me, it looks really nice.

I fully agree with the chunkiness of it,

I think it needs beefing up slightly.

I would get your own tree and mill it.

The raw tree is very cheap, getting a sawmill in to do it on site

is pretty cheap and you'll save a lot of money

if you just milled your own timber. A huge amount of money.

-Literally on site?

-On site.

You can do anything you like,

you could do all the floors and everything internally in timber.

For the roofing, Andrew and Claire are thinking of metal tiles

like the ones used on mobile homes.

Piers wants them to reconsider.

I want to stand back here and I'm itching to see the metal roof.

Yes, so that's the roof

and it's just the bog-standard agricultural profiled metal.

I actually quite like it.

That sample that you brought up,

I've been trying not to look at actually,

is corrugated steel designed to look like a tile.

So it's masquerading as something else.

And one thing that farm buildings need to exude is honesty

and directness, and the one rule is that your material can't

pretend to be anything else.

So the beauty of that is it's corrugated metal.

And it is what farm buildings are made of.

And I think it sits beautifully in this landscape.

If you had said to me about having a corrugated roof...

On paper, I wouldn't have liked it at all.

But actually, I really like it because it doesn't look too metal-y.

I think your other thing belongs on a caravan park,

-not a beautiful farm.

-I totally agree, it's more of a mobile home.

Exactly. Yeah.

Good. You're sold. We can go now.

I am sold on the roof.

Fired up by what he saw in the vineyard,

Andrew is off to buy timber.

We're talking about plucking out that one. What happens to these....

In the hope of making big savings,

he's sourcing it direct from the head forester on a local estate.

Here we have the dominant tree and the one next to it. Here we have...

-These are larch, are they?

-These are larch.

They're beautifully straight, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-That's the first thing that strikes me.

And not that many branches coming off them, so...

This is what we're aiming for.

We're aiming for this quality of timber.

We're aiming for straight, clean and we do that

A - by selecting the right seed to start with.

And then managing the crops. But to get here has been a lot of work.

These trees are about 60 years old.

The trees will be cut to order,

but estimating how much timber each one will yield

needs careful calculation.

Off these trees, you'd get probably three 16ft logs

and you might get a 10ft off the top.

-We're going to need 16 cubic meters of timber.

-OK.

And just to be safe, we're going to need about 20 trees, I think.

-OK.

-20-odd trees, something like that.

The logs are delivered within two weeks of confirming the order,

and with the saw mill on site, work on the cladding gets underway.

With each tree costing £15

and the miser saw and operator at around £300 per day,

Andrew's made a saving of around one third

compared to buying ready-sawn timber.

We've worked out we need 390 boards at 2.4 metres.

So it'll be certainly two days' worth of cutting, I should imagine.

The nice thing about larch is you don't have to treat it,

so it can go straight up.

Just tack it straight up and away we go.

Natural resin in the larch makes it rot resistant.

It'll last at least 30 years,

and potentially double that, whilst weathering nicely.

Having seen the corrugated roof,

Claire has ditched her previous choice of domestic tiles.

We are on a farm, so to have a nod towards an agricultural

building, even though it is a home, I think is really important

to help us blend in and look like the house has always been here

rather than some new monstrosity

that's just, you know, shoved down in the field somewhere.

This company that we've found with the coated corrugated steel

is a lot cheaper than the pressed tile that we looked at.

So I think we've saved about £1,000 going on this.

It's a much-needed saving because the financial pressures are extreme.

As a part of the cycle of egg production,

Andrew's had to replenish most of the hen flock.

We've just had to buy 3,000 chickens

that cost a little bit under £4.50.

So that's about £13,500.

And at the moment, we'd have quite liked to have that to help

with the house build, really,

but we've got to keep the business going.

Three months into the build,

the paperwork needed for the mortgage still isn't ready.

With his credit cards maxed out at ten grand,

Andrew has been forced to borrow a further £42,000 from friends

and family just to get the house watertight and keep building.

Fortunately, a very good friend and a family member has stepped in

and given me a bridging loan.

Which is fantastic because it means we can keep the windows coming on

and Kevin on site.

The build was in danger of just grinding to a halt,

so it's really nice.

It's quite humbling that someone was prepared to lend me

the money, quite honestly.

With no idea when they'll be able to pay back their friends,

the couple focus on sourcing materials as cheaply as possible.

Finding seconds of insulation saves them nearly £7,000.

Come on then. Let's go and see what they are up to.

The money nightmare continues to take its toll.

Just keeping the funds coming in to keep the supplies

coming in for Kevin has been...it's a juggling act.

It's a big juggling act and I've been pretty stressed and waking

early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep but...

The fabulous news that I literally heard about an hour ago

is that the bank have released the money.

So, as of tomorrow, we can actually draw on our mortgage,

which is a huge relief because everything has been up in the air.

-Looking good.

-Yeah, it is, isn't it?

Yeah, I can start paying off the cards

and breathing a little bit easier and sleeping easier.

Friends and family can be paid back too,

but finishing a three-bedroom house to a high standard

for less than £100K is still an enormous challenge.

Planning rules mean the house had to be built above ground on pillars

rather than sitting on conventional foundations,

but Andrew is unhappy with the result.

From this angle, you can see that

it's at least half a metre high there,

so we've got quite a lot of landscaping to do there, really.

It's the hard landscaping that

I'm struggling with at the moment, really.

How we landscape it

so it doesn't look like it's just been plonked there.

Andrew's attempted solution aimed to minimise expense

by scrimping on the quantity and cost of materials.

I initially bought a few pallets of these block pavers.

Claire and I sat and looked at it for a while

and just thought it wasn't in keeping with what we were trying to achieve.

So it's about finding the right material at the right price

that also fits nicely in the environment, really.

Andrew and Claire are at a crucial point in their build.

They're desperate that their house doesn't just become

a kind of mobile home sat on top of the landscape.

Today, I'm going to show them a building that I think relates

really well to its site

and uses a range of architectural strategies to achieve that.

I'm hoping there are lots of lessons here for Andrew and Claire

that they can take back and apply on their own house.

We've managed to get access to a private home in Bedfordshire

designed by Platform 5 architects.

So I'm really excited to bring you to this building today.

It's a beautiful, simple, modernist house.

I think it fits really, really well in this landscape.

And you can just see from here, the way this timber

box on the upper storey kind of looks out over the meadow.

It's still an issue for you guys, isn't it, how you

connect your building to the lovely landscape and garden around it?

Is that still something you are thinking over?

That's the main focus now.

The big trick is to try and make it not look

like it's been plonked in the middle of a field,

which it looks at the moment.

So it is about making it fit within the landscape.

Cos that was the whole point of the design of the building,

that it would blend in with the farm.

I think this is a building that does some of those things really well.

It's not a farmhouse, but it is a house that's on a large site,

that had to find a way to, in a way, root itself in that landscape.

So I'm excited to show you how they've done that.

-Great.

-Brilliant.

This creates a very beautiful atmosphere, doesn't it, this grass?

Yeah, it's lovely.

What I really wanted to show you about this building is,

I think, an elegant and very straightforward solution to

a problem you've got, which is the question of a building

sitting proud of the ground. And this single slate-covered plinth

is the ground inside, it's the terrace out here,

it's even the front doorstep, all on one single level.

Which, of course, is super accessible and useful, but gives you

lots of usable perimeter, lots of places to put a table

and chairs, lots of places for life to spill into the outdoors.

And I think that's something you guys really need.

I think it's absolutely stunning, absolutely stunning.

My first feeling really is that a single surface all the way round

is probably unachievable

because there is such a lot of drop in some areas.

I quite like the idea of some of the paths raising up slightly

and not all on one level actually.

I think it's such an interesting thing,

sometimes you think it's landscaping, it must be organic

and therefore, it should be wavy and curvy rather than hard.

I don't think that's the choice.

I think what you see here is actually just a platform

that allows you to enjoy the garden.

There's a real utility to this that surprisingly you might not

get with the more kind of landscaped, curvy profiles.

Let's go and take a look around this side.

The garden has distinct zones and this area cleverly uses gabions -

metal cages filled with stone.

I think it's really nice how these gabion walls

and this walled garden are actually right next to the front door.

Why don't we got and take a look at how the front door access works?

Cos I think it's really clever.

Andrew and Claire have front and back doors

on opposite sides of the house, so their landscaping needs

to signal to visitors which way they should go.

Meadowview does this in a very simple way.

I think this little planter is quite an interesting detail.

It sort of just directs you a bit towards the front door.

Gives a bit of structure to this

little bit of space in front of the house.

The inside reveals how brilliantly the use of one flooring material

seamlessly links the interior and exterior,

adding to the spacious feel.

It's just so beautiful how the view is immediately presented to you

when you come in, isn't it? It's really wonderful.

It's so light and airy and beautiful. Really lovely view.

And the grasses, Claire, we loved them outside,

-but they're almost better inside.

-Especially on a day like today.

-Yeah.

-For me, today's been fantastic.

To see how this building sits

in the landscaped gardens that they've created

just inspires me to want to go home and crack on with it, really.

I've really enjoyed this building today.

I think it really elegantly and simply relates to what is

a beautiful landscape and a lovely garden around it.

I think Andrew and Claire have also got a lot out of it.

If there was one concern I still have though, it's

when they talk about just how complex some of their ideas are.

Andrew's undulating paths.

They need to take a lesson from the clarity of purpose that

this building shows and make a very simple, elegant solution

to usable exterior space around the building.

I think when people think about the outsides of their building,

they think about the elevations, they think about

the composition of the windows and how it looks.

But actually, how a building sits in landscape is actually

much more important than that.

Andrew and Claire's house, at the moment, has been slightly

plonked down on this ground. And how it sits in this landscape,

and how then the new landscape allows you to experience both

the house and their own territory of their farm,

those things really need to be considered now.

Andrew and Claire know they want their living room to open

onto a patio, but beyond that, they have few fixed ideas.

They need to be clear how each space will function.

Talk to me a little bit about how

you see yourselves using these spaces.

I think the main bit for me is the patio, the raised deck.

The doors open right out. I'd like to have them wide open

and a space outside for the dining room table.

But I want it quite high so I can hide the kids' toys down the side.

Really, it's an extension of that space in there, isn't it?

But it also is the thing that connects

-the house with the garden, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

I think, for me, what I'd like to do is mock this up

so we can actually feel the shape and scale of it.

40 bales of straw will help visualise plans for the patio area.

Won't be going down to the gym tonight, Claire!

Tell me how far you thought of going in each direction, actually.

-We'd always thought the width of house...

-Yeah.

..seemed fairly straightforward, I guess.

-And then perhaps up to where Claire is standing there.

-Yeah.

But I don't know.

-Maybe it's not big enough.

-Actually, as you stand here...

-It isn't that big.

-Yeah. Maybe it should be bigger.

What about also going that way

so this is wrapped around and connected up with that?

If you imagine people arriving and that is your front door,

which it is, they'll walk up there and if you're not in there

and they see people round here, they'll carry on walking.

-And it'll be a lovely place to arrive straight into.

-Mm.

We never thought of it from this side.

We were always going to wrap it around from the other side.

-Right.

-I don't know why.

-Maybe this is a more practical side.

-That's where the sun is.

-Yeah.

Moving the bales around is a quick and easy way to see just how

much the house could be transformed by the landscaping.

For me, I think this thing wants to come this way.

I think that it definitely should come to maybe five bales along.

That's looking more like it.

Nearly doubling the size of the patio

and creating a continuous sweep around to the front door will

immediately make the house feel more embedded in its surroundings.

Remember this whole notion of a chalet

that you're trying to get away from.

If this was a chalet on a holiday park, it would have a little,

you know, terrace probably two bales' width at the front.

This one move, I think, transforms the building.

Doing this makes it into something completely different.

And will soften it down because, at the moment, it is a box in a field.

Totally.

Andrew and Claire hope to sell the caravan and use the funds to

pay for the landscaping, but inside, there's a problem with the partition

that will be the key feature, dividing the living area and study.

Claire envisages a bookcase.

Here is going to be the bookcase.

So you'll be able to see through it.

It'll be floor to ceiling with books, ornaments.

With money tight, bespoke joinery is out of the question,

and Claire's stumped for alternatives.

We don't want to put something up for the sake of putting it up,

we want to really think about it and get it right.

And I think it's going to be the biggest focus.

Piers has brought Andrew and Claire to a plumbers' merchant

to look for cost-effective materials to create their own

architectural solution.

Yes. They're not the most glamorous of locations, but these places

have interesting things inside them.

So this is a place that distributes

all sorts of different pipes and tubes, and really I want to try

-and find a material we can use to make your shelves out of.

-OK.

Maybe not just a material - a system of building.

Something that's quite quick and quite improvised.

And actually, I hope quite cost effective.

-Like scaffolding.

-Yeah. But probably better.

-Right.

-Let's go and see.

-I'm liking.

This is galvanised. This stuff is all useful.

This is the sort of thing that I want to show you.

The principle of this is that you buy the tubing in three or

six metres, either in galvanised or powder coated.

Then you buy any number of different fittings.

That is how you join two tubes together.

90 degree bend. Yep.

-That would be a floor fitting.

-Right.

-So, screw that to the floor.

Obviously, you then wind it up with an Allen key,

to secure it to the clamp.

-It just gives us hundreds of different options.

-It does.

-The fact that we've got a sloping ceiling.

-Absolutely.

It just makes life a whole lot easier.

If you had two pieces,

and it obviously doesn't have to necessarily be this thickness,

and then the scaffold board or a board straight on top of that.

-Absolutely, yeah.

-Yeah.

-And you can make up boxes if you want to.

-Pull things in and out.

-I really like it.

-Let's get a few.

-And go and have a play.

-Wiggly ones.

-What's that then?

-Wiggly one.

-Yeah.

-You're in your element.

-I am. I'm having a great time.

-It's fairly straightforward, basic and simple.

-It is. Yeah.

These fittings really are cost-effective.

From a trade outlet, the fittings are about four quid each.

And the pipe, ungalvanised, is about four pounds a linear metre.

-OK.

-I think it's more, about 50% more if you have it powder coated.

The galvanised option is cheaper. It's probably 300 quid a fitting.

Or something, off the top of my head.

If we had something bespokely made, it would cost thousands.

Thousands, yeah, absolutely.

But think of the fun you'll have with this.

I think it's a boys' toys number. I think I'll go out shopping that day.

We are going to need a whole raft of different pieces.

We've really struggled with how we can construct this bookshelf, but

today I feel that we've now got the solutions to the problem, really.

Yeah, we need those.

I think what's great about this system is that it forces them

to design. You know, you can

really have fun and let that sense of exploration take over.

Andrew and Claire are now battling to finish the job that will

make or break the success of their house build.

They need to make it sit in its landscape,

so there are 140 tonnes of soil to be moved to level the site.

Andrew's using free soil donated by a neighbour, saving at least £1,400.

The sale of the caravan has helped pay for a far more expansive

area of patio and path than originally planned.

Upgrading to sandstone slabs throughout should unify the look.

We've actually faced the step with larch

so it brings a little bit of the house onto the patio, if you like.

Using timber left over from the cladding

also helps stretch the budget a bit further.

Piers has had a significant input into some areas of the house.

I only wish he could come and help!

Brilliant. And that one.

Inside, the shelves dividing the study

and living area are critical to the end result.

It seems straightforward and fairly easy.

However, it will be very much trial and error today.

We'll just see how it goes, really.

OK, now.

Push it in a bit more.

OK, that's it.

A statement piece, if it looks good, is amazing.

A statement piece, if it looks rubbish,

is going to make the whole thing look unfinished.

Andrew and Claire have been incredibly willing to adopt

bold design ideas, but have they managed to bring them

together to transform what was going to be a basic chalet

into a unique, contemporary family home?

Andrew and Claire began this process trying to build almost

the impossible - a modern three-bed farmhouse for just £70,000.

They've spent the last year living in a tiny caravan with their entire

family, sometimes bank-rolling the build on credit cards.

At the end, though, have they been able to meet the toughest challenge

of all - to build a home that feels rooted in its site here on the farm?

Ten months after they started building,

Piers and I are back to see how successful they've been.

-Hi there.

-Nice to see you both.

-Hi, Kieran.

-It's so nice to see you.

-Amazing.

-Congratulations.

-Thank you.

-It's done.

It looks incredibly finished. I must congratulate you.

And it does feel like it sort of belongs here somehow.

-That was one of the big challenges for you.

-It was.

It was always how it would fit in on top of a hill in the middle

of a field, really.

Andrew's decision to cut timber on site and take control

of his own building has had a big impact on the look of the house.

It's great to see the timber up and looking really chunky.

I'm sure it's going to get even better in the colour over time.

But how do you feel about it? Does it have that

sense of permanence that you were looking for?

I really like it.

We were struggling to know exactly how to clad it.

And obviously Piers keep up with this idea of sawing our own timber.

And that whole experience has been fantastic.

I absolutely love it.

The fact that it's even changing colour already.

One of the bits of a building I think is most important

is how the roof meets the wall and I remember coming here

and suggesting that you lose this big boxy fascia.

We decided not to have the soffit.

There was a fair old discussion about it, I think.

There was a big discussion.

I tried to persuade you to cut it off altogether, I think,

and have this very clipped singular building.

-We met halfway, Piers.

-With a concealed gutter. Yes.

THEY LAUGH

You've chosen a metal chunky gutter

and then just using a very straightforward, wriggly

tin on the roof instead of the fake tiles you were going to use,

y'know those things speak of farms, they speak of permanence.

Well, we absolutely love it.

And the fact that it's going to get better with age...

-Does it feel like a temporary building inside?

-BOTH: No.

-Not at all.

-I hope not. Have a look.

-Shall we go and see?

-Yeah, come on.

Wow, this is fantastic.

What a huge space!

It's amazing. And coming right into this space is great, isn't it?

We absolutely love it, that feeling of openness.

By reviewing the building's structure

and how they want to live, they've created a huge open-plan area.

And I love the fact that you haven't got that central column.

That was always going to be a central...

The central column would have played havoc with this space.

And it's great how simple it is.

I mean, it has a south-facing terrace with good windows.

The kitchen is very simple and acts as a place to linger.

Which is what you're doing now.

First thing people do is come in and lean on here.

And actually, a lovely big space to arrive into.

Everything in here feels solid, robust and well made.

Looking around,

I can also see that these window reveals are non-standard.

And, you know, just that kind of two-inch thick bit of timber

there instead of a mean, bull-nosed bit of MDF feels great.

I really like the window reveals.

It's sort of brings a little bit of wood inside.

Originally, I don't know if you remember,

we were going to plasterboard this. Just following what was normal.

Building houses is often just a process of doing what

people normally do. And to step outside that is pretty hard

because you've got to unpick everything.

The partition has defined two spaces

and become a stunning piece of furniture.

This is one of my favourite bits in this room.

In the whole kind of living area.

It has worked so beautifully. I really love it.

I'm really pleased that we've got the separate study

but it is one big area.

Tell me how much it actually cost to do this?

Um, scaffold boards are about five pounds reclaimed.

£300 for the whole lot, probably.

And it's much cheaper than it would be to build a tedious white wall.

What it does is reduce the effective length of this corridor.

The corridor has also been shortened by moving the master bedroom door.

For Claire, getting out of the caravan has been a real milestone.

It was a huge relief to be able to get in and out of bed

without bashing a damp wall.

-And this is the bedroom.

-Welcome to my boudoir!

That is fantastic!

The focus in the master bedroom is a bespoke wardrobe.

Claire designed it using architectural salvage wood panels

that cost just £250.

What does it mean to you, and the family,

to have finished your first home together?

It's been absolutely amazing.

The fact that we're in our first home together,

but it's one that we've all created, I think that means the most to me.

I think it's made us even closer.

After life cooped up in the caravan,

Edward now has plenty of space for his toys

and Tallulah has her own sanctuary.

The cramped shower has been exchanged for a practical

and inviting family bathroom.

Outside, the house that once appeared plonked down on the

site is transformed by a near doubling of the size of the patio.

-So, the patio.

-Amazing.

This really kind of flows out into the garden, doesn't it?

It does. It's quite nice, yeah.

Did it ever feel really indulgent doing this when money was so tight?

No!

Because for me it was more about how it sat in its environment.

It's amazing for me how this house

and this patio feels completely embedded in this landscape.

Yeah. It was always our biggest challenge.

The reality is, there have been many challenges.

And it was never going to be easy to deliver

a quality home on their tight budget.

So how have they done?

Tell me how much money you had for this project

and how much you ended up spending.

Originally we thought it was going to be £70,000.

That's probably not really very realistic.

We came in at about £89,000 for the house

and then we spent a further £8,000 on landscaping.

I must say, £89,000 for what you've got here is astonishing.

It works out at £700 per square metre.

£700 per square metre is extremely cheap.

Especially for an environment of this quality.

Going along, having no money, I think has actually made this

building better because we've had to consider every last little screw,

handle, wall panel, everything has been really carefully considered,

and researched and researched.

But it is just lovely that we have got our own eight acres of paradise.

To have built your own house on your own farm,

there's something really beautiful about that,

and I love every minute of it.

I think what I like about the building is it feels very natural,

very inevitable. It doesn't really try too hard.

It's made out of really good quality materials

that will age really well. It's full of light, full of space.

I think they've achieved a great deal.

Andrew and Claire are thrilled with their new home,

and at last it's ready to receive the friends

and family who supported them throughout.

What will they make of it?

The ideas that she's come up with have been amazing.

-So, yeah, really good.

-I wouldn't be that creative if it was left to me.

-That...fencing?

-Shelving.

-Shelving. We love that.

We think that's really, really good.

We are so proud of what we've achieved

and the fact that we are in.

This still doesn't feel 100% real, even though we live here.

It has been an amazing process, hasn't it?

I couldn't have done it without you. HE LAUGHS

Andrew and Claire have just made a brilliant job of this build.

I'm so happy for them and so proud of them, really,

that they've made such a high-quality result out of a

process that, let's face it, could have stopped at certain points.

They were really on the rocks, they were running out of money

and this could have ground to a halt and perhaps never started again.

They started out, really, with quite low aspirations.

No more than a glorified Portakabin was supposed to come

out of this process.

But by looking at design and taking buildings seriously,

they have ended up with a place that's perfect for them and one

that's emerged naturally from the way they live and what they like.

Next time...

Jo and Andy are trying to create an energy efficient eco-home.

It's hard when you are not designers. Will that work? Will it not work?

There are things here that you can learn from.

It's a waste of space.

But will their no-frills approach mean they end up living in a bunker?

It could be really harshly cold if you're not careful.