Grand Designs (1999) s01e03 Episode Script

1
Building your own house is
an enormously personal project.
It's the ultimate in
self-expression, if you like.
But this week we're looking at a group
of families who are building not only
their own, but also each other's houses.
It's May 1998 and the Hedgehog self-build
co-op has been up and running for
six months already.
It's a long build over two years
because the families involved are building
with their bare hands.
Ten houses, six of which
are already part there.
It's hard labour and they won't
even own these houses at the end.
They'll belong to their
landlords, a housing association.
This is an exciting
alternative to the
run-of-the-mill social
housing in Britain.
The families involved didn't want to
settle for the usual boring brick and
concrete buildings on offer.
Instead, what they wanted was something
designed with their needs in mind,
somewhere where they can live and flourish.
They don't want to build just houses,
they want to build a community.
Although many of the people on the
scheme have some sort of part-time work,
each family must commit to 30
hours labour on site each week.
It's as much as people could possibly
do, I think, and it's very hard to.
fulfil those commitments
unless you're very lucky with extra
childcare and don't get ill, basically.
So we're very paired right down to
the bone as far as time management.
It's really hard work.
It's hard work juggling the hours.
It's hard work getting the children
for the hours and having a life as well.
There are ten families consisting of
17 adults, none of whom have built
before.
The houses are going up just on the
edge of the seaside resort of Brighton,
and the project is the brainchild of
Paul Crouch and his partner, Jenny.
After several years on
the road living in caravans,
they decided they wanted a permanent
home for themselves and their daughter.
Paul, what motivated you in the first
place to get involved with Self Build?
I think originally it was the realisation
that the way that I'd been living
was quite insecure.
I'd been living on the road as a
traveller and I had a two-year-old daughter
and the gradual realisation that as
she grew up she was going to have a lot
less opportunity, I think, in life
because of the way that I was living.
As a model for their Self Build scheme,
Paul and Jenny
discovered a project in
Brighton called the
Diggers Co-operative.
It was a revelation for them, a
community of ordinary families like
themselves with little
or no money who were
building homes not
to own, but to rent.
The whole thing was being managed
and financed by a housing association.
Why didn't you just get a mortgage?
You don't tend to get wage slips when
you're picking potatoes in West Wales,
so it's quite hard to go to a
mortgage company and go,
'Here's my life, it's a bit unorthodox,
but I'm a good risk anyway.'
Getting the project started was hard work.
After a lot of research, Paul found
some land which had been set aside for
council housing.
It's on the edge of the South
Downs, one mile in from the sea.
The site is so steep
that it had already
been rejected by two
commercial developers.
Paul then had to get the backing of
a sympathetic housing association.
They purchased the land from
Brighton Council for £58,000.
He then worked with the association
to put the co-operative together
with people who were in
housing need like himself.
They all came from the council's
housing list, people like Tony,
who's a single parent
struggling on a low
income with seven-year-old
daughter Poppy.
There's a wonderful chance to have a house.
I kind of have this vision of Poppy
and all the other kids in the South Bill
having somewhere nice to grow
up in and that drives us all on, I think.
Well, we were being
evicted because the
person who owned
our house was selling it
and that happened again
to us really soon after that.
We ended up moving three times
in about, I don't know, 18 months.
We've lived in many places, we've
had lots of insecure rental situations.
I don't know, I've
always just felt like it
would be really nice
to put down roots
and it's never happened yet and
this was the best one of all the options
that we've had in the past because
we're sorting our own housing out.
The design of these houses
perfectly suits the steep sloping site
because they rest on stilts and
you don't need deep foundations.
The system was invented in the
1960s by the architect Walter Siegel.
and was specifically designed
with self-builders in mind.
Walter Siegel's
method of self-build is
very ecologically
sensitive and very simple.
Wall panels are made on the
ground and erected side by side.
Like a house of cards, the
structure is then braced diagonally
and then the roof goes on.
The roofs will eventually
be topped with grass
so the development will blur
into the surrounding environment.
Apart from the concrete plinths,
the entire construction is of softwood
which is sustainable.
The hedgehog
co-op have also opted
to clad their buildings
with native timber
allowing them to individualise
their homes with paint and stain.
Although the Siegel method
allows for two or more floors,
the hedgehogs have been
restricted by the planners to one storey
which simplifies construction.
The windows and doors
are timber and double glazed.
And the houses are finally
dressed with a projecting deck
that offers the
occupant some private
outdoor space as
well as a small garden.
And there's also some communal land.
Each house will cost £60,000 to build,
about the cost of a comparable
brick and mortar house.
But the difference is
that these unusual homes
will offer their
occupants a quality of
life unparalleled on
any housing estate.
Six of the houses are up
and the frames are now being
made for the last four homes.
They've got to be finished and
clad before the onset of winter.
But there are no shortcuts on this site.
No flatpacks, no kit houses.
Every inch of the frame is
being made by hand on site.
And because they're learning
as they go, it's painfully slow.
After seven months
working on the other houses,
Michael and Donna are finally getting
to make the frame for their own home.
Donna is three months
pregnant, but that's
not going to keep her
away from the build.
She's determined to make her own mistakes.
This is my favourite job
on the whole building site.
I really like doing it, so I was very
pleased to be able to do my own.
I have messed up one of the joints,
but maybe it's better that I
messed it up than somebody else.
Yeah, it's very good. It's very relaxing.
You know, for the last six, seven months,
we've been working on everyone else's house
and all of a sudden
you realise you're
going to put up your
own house fairly soon.
That's quite exciting.
Learning on the job is a slow
and often frustrating business.
On a project as complicated as a
house, you need a guiding hand,
so the Housing
Association have provided
a site manager to
oversee the build.
For three days a week, the co-op
have the expertise of veteran self-builder
Jeff Stowe.
How are your motley crew?
They're doing really well.
They're doing well.
They're doing as well as you can sense.
It's a very big
commitment to expect from
people and they're
doing 30 hours a week.
They've got families
to bring up and
they're often in quite
bad housing anyway,
so that puts quite a strain on their lives.
So they're doing really
well in terms of that.
It's July and the frames are now ready.
With the limited funds they have, the
co-op can only afford a crane for one
day to put them up,
so they must get it right.
These are the last frames to
go up in the hedgehog build,
so not surprisingly
there's a feeling
of anticipation and
excitement on site.
Today, everyone who can
has turned up on site to help,
but despite the
relaxed atmosphere, this
is still a building
site, not a picnic.
Putting up the frames is a
serious and dangerous business.
The frames simply rest on the
concrete beds. There are no fixings. It all
seems so simple.
Temporary battens are diagonally
nailed to the frame to brace it in place.
Are you right in the corner there, Geoff?
I'm pretty good on the line.
I'm a little bit out of level.
If they're not secured properly,
there could be fatal consequences.
Accuracy is vital. It may be a simple
design, but these frames will form the
backbone of the houses.
They're also very
heavy and unwieldy.
It needs brains and
brawn to get it right,
but in all that heavy
physical work and
in the sharing of
something productive,
I can begin to see how these people
are forging their community spirit.
It's a momentous occasion, and
even the children are on site to see the
frames of their future
homes put into place.
We started at seven
o'clock this morning.
The crane came
about an hour later.
I'm standing now on
frame two of my house.
This is my house.
This is a grand moment.
I stayed on site
overnight, slept in
my car, just so I'd
be here this morning.
Debbie's has gone up this one, and
then next comes Michael and Donna's,
and then Paul and Jenny's. That's
the last frame to go up. Top of the world.
Fantastic.
All right.
This is my, mine and Donna's house.
Very exciting.
We've been waiting for about six,
seven months to put this house up, so it's
a very exciting day for us all.
All that effort and camaraderie
reminds me of those American
Quaker and Amish communities
who build each other's houses.
Put like that, I can imagine Paul
playing the part of one of their elders,
but his house is the last to go up.
Today we've been putting up the
last four houses' worth of frames,
so the site will be at the same level
of completion before the winter comes,
so everything will be, all the
work will be being done inside.
It also means that plot
one is now with frame,
which is good. It
means that's my house,
so it's nice to be able to see
my house going up a little bit.
Well, I've waited about five years,
and I'm fairly pleased that my house has
been started now.
It's got rid of any lingering
doubts I might have had
about it not happening.
Yeah, it's a good feeling.
I think we can look forward to the
next stage now where we've got a few
weeks' hard work getting the
other four houses enclosed,
and then we've got a winter of inside
work, and I think we're doing pretty
well to be on schedule with that.
It's been a hard day, but they can
now get on with these four houses.
Still, they've got a long haul ahead of
them, but for Donna, her dream house
is finally becoming reality.
The Walter Siegel design of house
is the ultimate in building democracy.
Anyone who can lift a hammer
can build a Siegel house.
It's cheap and accessible to
the most novice of builders.
I've never worked
with wood before in
my life, apart from
cutting it up to burn.
I'm a welder, and I can work with
metal well, but the idea that it was.
deliberately designed for people with
no existing carpentry skills was very.
attractive, really, on a practical level.
People tend to think that it's something
that they wouldn't be able to do,
and a friend of mine
built her own house,
so I used to think I
could never do that.
But actually, you know,
anything's possible, really.
This philosophy that anyone could do
it was developed by Walter Siegel when
building this little
house at the bottom of
his overgrown garden in
Highgate, north London.
This house may
not look like much,
but it was the start
of a small revolution.
It was built by the architect Walter
Siegel as temporary accommodation for
his family while their new
six-bedroom house was being built.
Siegel designed both of the buildings,
but it was this little house that
really captured his imagination.
So much so that, in fact, it led him
to completely rethink the way that
houses are built.
This is really just like a wartime prefab.
The other really weird impression is,
because of these recessed panels and
all this exposed timber and the low
ceiling and the curve of it having sunk,
it's just like a little medieval cottage.
All the materials used for this house,
like those at Hedgehog, were bought
off the shelf and assembled
on site by Siegel himself.
The windows are just pieces of glass,
no hinges, no frames, nothing. Just as
you'd expect from a house
designed to last just a year or two.
From Highgate to Forest Hill in south
London, where Siegel explored the idea
that if he could build his own home
so easily, then why couldn't others?
It was here that he was invited to
work with Lewisham Council on an
experimental self-built scheme.
Just as in Brighton, the people who
were building these houses were also the
people who were going to be living in them.
Sadly, Walter Siegel died halfway
through building in 1985, but all those
ideas that he was
working on in that
little house at the
bottom of his garden,
all those ideas,
albeit on a larger
scale, were developed
in these buildings.
Once inside, you get a real sense
of light and space thanks to all these
windows that are here.
And what makes that possible is the
way that the building is put together.
In an ordinary conventional house,
it's the walls that are doing all the
work. They're supporting the weight.
But in a Walter Siegel house, it's
these great corner posts that are doing
it, which means that you
can move them about.
You can swap them, put windows
in here, take doors out there.
You can even remove entire sections
of the wall and build extensions, like
this one, which was put
in only, what, a year ago.
Since 1980, more than 200 houses
in the social housing sector have been
built using Walter Siegel's method.
It's a method which gives people
skills and it gives them purpose.
But 200 houses is just a drop in the
ocean compared to all those houses
built out of brick
and concrete and
high-rise buildings
used for social housing.
One of the joys of Siegel's
method is that it's quite easy to make
adjustments to the build as you go along.
Some of the new frames for the four
houses that are now up on site need to
be tweaked so the floor
joists can be put in place.
We all make mistakes.
I don't know, it's just stuff, isn't it?
It's very, very heavy, but it's
only bits of wood, isn't it?
So actually, you can move it
and you can whack it around.
There's something about the
I don't know.
It's like when you're little and you
first realise you can break things, I
suppose, or you can knock a chair
over, do you know what I mean?
Before you've always been able to
lean up against them or whatever.
It's a bit like that, you know.
You kind of expect, there's a
house, isn't it? It's going to be really,
really solid, but at the moment it isn't.
So yeah, if you hit it with
a big bit of wood, it moves.
It's great.
I hope he knows what he's doing.
In fact, the joists will not only
support the floor, they'll also brace the
frames together, making
the whole structure more solid.
Small pieces of wood, noggins, are
then fitted between the joists to further
stabilise the whole structure.
There are more than 100 noggins in
each house, maybe 1200 on the whole site.
It's laborious, repetitive work and
demonstrates that you need more than
vision to build a house.
You need stamina. This is a real slog.
The next rather dangerous
job is putting the roof on.
The roof joists are made
out of recycled wood.
They're light, but also extremely strong.
That's important because they have
to support the weight of tonnes of soil
and turf, which will
eventually top the building.
Building this way is laborious, but it's
supposed to be so easy, surely even
I should be able to do it.
Have you had to learn many skills?
Yeah, pretty much all of them.
I still struggle with that, must admit.
Do you?
Where does this one go?
Put that one here.
You're doing all this by eye?
Kind of.
Kind of.
This is the wall
stud work, which will
hold the windows and
wall panels in place.
So that's every
sort of, what's that?
Every metre really,
isn't it, more or less?
Yeah.
What about the builder's
vocabulary, things like?
I think that we pick up
as we're going along.
Things like, we'll be back after lunch.
Oh yeah.
I just don't understand why the
hedgehogs are building in this bitty way.
Why not make the side walls as hull
frames and then lift them into place?
There's two or three already here.
These are the ones you made earlier.
Yeah, and they're in place. This one is
Right, there's pencil
marks here, so this is
Yeah, that's where I
marked them up earlier.
Yeah, right.
So I want to put this one
next to this one over this side.
Right, OK.
Now, I'm going on
the line that's on the
bottom rail here, not
on the joist, yeah?
Yeah.
Because the left on the same principle.
Yeah.
OK, well that measurement then is 3715.
Well, we'll soon find out
if it's wrong, won't we?
No, it is right.
Now, do we offer it up?
Let's go for it.
This way a bit.
Well, what do you think?
I think that's pretty good, actually.
You reckon?
Not bad.
It's a mirror too short, isn't it?
Yeah.
I'll go for a look.
Like a final shot.
I think it would be all right.
Is that lined up?
That is, I'm afraid, to your left slightly.
That is lined up.
Yes, and?
I think that would be all right.
You think that's tolerable?
I think that would be all right.
As long as we make
sure the other one's fit.
Oh, for God's sake!
Exactly.
That was so barbed.
OK, now, if we
leave it there Yeah?
I'll just stand here, then.
We rest it there.
I'll just stand here.
No, but Be a
useless apprentice.
You can just rest it.
How do you manage on days
like today when it's so windy?
I've just realised something.
What?
Because this is bent downwards, OK?
Oh, I see.
Right, it's back down, it's
slipped down, so if we push it up
Oh, that was right after all.
It will fit that.
It will fit.
To relieve the boredom
of all that repetitive work,
there's always an opportunity
to switch tasks for a day or two.
As the more developed
houses progress,
those acres of timber
need protecting,
and windows that
have already been put in
need to be painted
while the weather's dry.
In keeping with
the whole build, the
co-op are using an
eco-friendly product.
Each member of the co-op
has chosen their own colour.
The paint's brushed on and
then wiped off to reveal the grain.
This one I think is called Natural Spruce,
and it's supposed to be about
the most transparent one, really.
This is Gina's.
She's not too keen on the
colour now she's chosen it.
But she'll grow to love it!
She'll stay to things,
it's like, you know
It's great that we're going to
be living next door to each other.
It's not even great that all the other
women up here are just amazing.
So it's not like it's just
It's just a unique
thing, I'm moving
into my next door,
you know, best friend.
It's more that they're
all our best friends now.
We go out on our hedge birds night out,
have a few shants, and it's not a
face of me just knowing her, you know,
like we thought it might be.
"Oh, I'll do it, you know,
we'll do it together.".
It's just turned into an enormous
great family, it's fantastic.
Couldn't have been more perfect, really.
Oh, no, I'm quite
It's growing on me now.
You like it? Yeah,
I'm glad you like it,
cos I didn't like it
when I first saw it.
That's the old name, Gina.
What you're doing, darling?
Actually, I like it now.
I would say that most of
us have come to this scheme
as a way of providing ourselves
with affordable, secure housing.
But the fact that in order to do that,
we have to work
cohesively as a co-operative,
I think has also
appealed to people
because you can start to
build a community of people,
not based on any sort of particularly
complex set of understandings,
but just the fact that you know
that you've built your own house
or, well, actually, you've built
a tenth of ten houses together.
You've been through the same experience.
Because each household has
to put in 30 hours' work a week,
rain or shine, childcare
has become a major issue.
The creative solution has
been to set up a creche on site.
We had to set up the creche
because we're all working
and none of us have got very much money.
Most of us are having to work part-time
in order to be able to keep
up the hours on the build.
So it was just essential that we
could organise some free childcare,
and this is the way that
we thought best to do it.
We know that the children
are safe, they're on site,
and we've got the building to
do it in, so it works quite well.
It's really good for all the children
to be getting to know each other
before they move up on site.
Some of them are really young, and if
they weren't coming up here regularly,
I don't think they'd quite
understand what was going on
because it's such a long-term project.
Because they speak to their hedgehog
piglet friends, as the club is called,
they're getting much more of an
understanding of what's going on up here
and why their mums and
dads are doing lots of building.
I don't want to go to the club a bit.
That's the shape of your lips.
I don't want that.
Would you want to go and wipe it off, then?
The creche is also
used for the more serious
business of meetings
held by the group.
This is co-op democracy at work.
Tony, have we heard
that from the Butyl Rufus?
No, they were supposed
to come last Wednesday.
They're supposed to drop something
off today, the remembering, I believe,
and they're supposed to be working
tomorrow because they need chasing up.
The Christmas holidays, we need to
decide how much time we're having off.
and how many hours we're
allowed to have for free.
What we're going to do is
put a sheet up on the board
with a list of different options,
and we can choose whatever
gets the highest vote we do.
Whether it be a week off or just some
hours off, depending on production.
It was decided to open up the
steps going down out of the creche,
the dodgy, steep, nasty, slippery horizons.
I was meant to be
rebuilding them at some point.
Well, that could happen,
but it seems to me it's quite
a lot of investment of energy
to get you to rebuild those steps
when it's not actually essential.
I'd rather be building your houses
than sorting out your creche steps.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, and I
think that's a better use of you.
Just one other point,
which is the wood
and the bits of
nails, etc., on the site.
We agreed ages ago that we'd
clear up all around our houses,
and it has been done a bit, but not enough.
I mean, if you fell through the joists,
there's quite a few bits of
wood with nails poking outwards.
It could be nasty.
The co-op is a legally incorporated
body, not some woolly, hippy commune.
Many of the builders
are ex-travellers
or have pursued
alternative lifestyles,
but this is no freebie.
It's their only hope for
a decent, secure home.
It's very important to have a
Land Rover to tow my caravan.
So I spent all my time and
effort and money and love
and all sorts of things on this vehicle.
Time has come to sell it
through being extremely broke,
which is a bit of a problem,
mostly to do with the fact that
you can't really have a full-time job
and build a house for 30 hours a week.
So as a family, we've become very
poor over the last year and a half,
and that's where it's come to now,
selling your possessions to keep
yourself going till the end of the build.
It's important that everybody realises
that you do have to make
sacrifices to do this kind of thing.
And keeping to 30 hours work a week
is proving almost impossible
for single parent Tony
because there's no-one
to share the work with.
If he can't catch up, he
could even lose his house
and all the investment of time he's put in.
Have you fulfilled your quota so far?
I've got very badly behind at
one stage and I'm catching up.
I was 100 hours behind now and I'm only 50.
That's quite a lot. Yeah, yeah.
It's around 3% of the sum of
the build hours that you put in.
I got in that situation
because it was so difficult
to obtain it 30 hours a
week in the first place,
and so it's very hard to make them up.
So are you working as well at the moment?
It wouldn't be possible to.
There's no time in the day in between
working here and looking after a kid.
Everybody finds it very tight.
The people that are working, the
couples, they can just about manage it.
But the single parents
just find it impossible?
Yeah, it just wouldn't be possible.
So you end up being
entirely wedded to this project?
It'd be all right
if it got paid for it
like a normal builder
does, I suppose.
And the winter's coming as well.
I mean, the girls said that
last winter was quite easy
because you were all
enthusiastic and new to the project,
but this one's going to be hard.
Yeah, the novelty's
wearing off now a little bit.
The housing association have sent
their clerk of works to inspect the site.
The co-op have to meet
weekly targets set for them,
but they're falling
woefully behind as the
project loses more
and more momentum.
Well, the construction is very good.
We've got no problems whatsoever,
and I'm very impressed with
the way it's been constructed.
because there is no one basically
trained in the building industry.
So I'm very impressed.
My only concern is the
speed of construction.
I think we ought to be far more
advanced than we are at the moment.
The speed of the build is
further hampered by the fact
that some co-op members
keep changing their minds
about how the houses should be laid out.
The design does allow
this, but they ought
to have made their
minds up after one year.
Are you changing the design of this?
We're considering it, yes.
My main concern is that it might
mean going back to the planners.
So this design method
gives you the opportunity
to fiddle around
with the structure?
Yeah, but also because the
self-builders that are building the houses,
it's very hard for them to fully understand
what the place is going to
be like just from the plans,
and so they kind of agree
at the planning stage,
but then when they actually
see the layout, they say,
"I don't really want that.
Could we do that?".
And then if the option's there,
some things they definitely can't do,
some things have to remain possibilities.
Right, so what are you going to do?
Are you going to enclose this?
That's what they want to
know if it's possible to do,
to give them that space as a living
room space rather than a throne.
It's November. Winter
approaches, and this
cladding should have
been on in the summer.
It looks flimsy, but like
every part of the building,
it's designed to further
brace and stabilise
the existing structure,
like a drum skin.
More nails are banged in, and a few more.
It's awkward and uncomfortable work,
and not very popular with the builders.
By this stage, the glamour
has certainly worn off.
They're all working
slowly, and are now
up against their own
lack of experience.
They're also hampered
by the changing weather,
up against a tight schedule,
and in desperate need of funds,
which need to be released
by the Housing Association,
to pay for subcontractors.
There's come a point
now where we have to start
spending a lot of the money that
we have allocated for subcontraction,
which is a little bit of a scary thought,
because we haven't got enough
money for subcontraction as yet,
and if we start spending it
now, it won't be there later,
but if we don't spend it now,
then there won't be a later.
The Housing Association have
agreed to release just enough money
to pay for a carpenter.
Matty has now joined as a
contract worker on the build.
Personally, I think having him is
something of a drop in the ocean.
It's December, and the co-op
members are hoping that Matty
will help give the build new momentum,
so he's got his work cut out for him.
Whatever happens, they've
got a tough winter ahead.
The co-op have allowed themselves
some hours off over Christmas,
and have organised a party
to take their minds off the build.
But there's little
Christmas cheer for Tony.
He's under huge pressure,
making up the hours he's missed.
As the nights are
drawing in, they're
all having to work
in the dark and cold
for the build to remain on schedule.
It just doesn't let up.
With temperatures below zero,
it's just the weather for hitting
a frozen finger with a hammer.
The build is now taking on
the challenge of an Arctic trek.
Arduous, slow and cold, this is
not an easy way of getting a house.
All over feeling.
All over feeling.
With so much work to do on site,
no pair of hands are ever left idle.
You all right there, Matty?
Yeah mate.
Yeah, good hand with this window, will you?
Carry it down the bottom of the site.
Haven't you got enough labour here?
Well, they're all busy,
aren't they, up the other end?
They're all busy in platform.
How heavy is it?
It's not heavy.
Is it not?
No, it's never enough.
You can do it.
Which way?
This way.
This way.
It's only certain
temperatures that it gets like.
This is one of the last windows
to be fitted in Debbie's house
and is going into her daughter's bedroom.
Look what we've brought you, look.
Hey, my window.
Nice and shiny and new.
Debbie's a single parent whose
house was one of the last to go up.
Well, it's good at the bottom.
There's about two or three mil
here on this that I didn't notice before.
It's catching.
There's still a long way to go at the top.
It's catching just here.
Might just bounce it with this.
It's at times like this that Matty's
expertise becomes invaluable.
Maybe.
Yeah, that's it, you're in.
Just hit it down the bottom.
Yeah.
It's February and inside number 10
the wall cavities are being filled with
insulation made from recycled paper.
All-year-old newspapers are taken
to a factory in Wales where they're
shredded and have a fire retardant added.
New homes in the UK are the
worst insulated in Northern Europe.
But here at Hedgehog
the builders are addressing
this with up to 300
millimetres of insulation.
Once it's in, the rooms are
ready for plasterboarding.
The project's been underway for 14
months, but there's nearly a year of hard
work ahead before any
of the families can move in.
Spirits are flagging,
so I've decided to
try and give the
Hedgehog co-op a boost.
This is number 10, Hedgehog Terrace.
That's Hedgehog build.
Which is ironic really because it's
actually going to be the first one to be
finished.
Now, since these houses are taking
two and a half years to build, all told,
we thought it would
be a very good
idea if we could see
one entirely finished.
Which means decorating it on
the inside, which is down to me.
Before I can start decorating, the
house has to be finished, so it's all
hands on deck to get the internal
walls in place and ready for my scheme.
While everyone's left working on
the house, I'm off furniture hunting.
Now, if you've spent two years
putting your life on hold with no earning
potential while you build your house,
you're going to be pretty strapped for
cash by the time it's built.
So it's clear that our Hedgehog show
home is going to need to be decorated
on a very tight budget.
I've come to this
furniture warehouse just
outside Brighton that
belongs to Emmaus.
It's a charity run by people
who are formerly homeless.
It's just the kind of place to find
some Hedgehog household gems.
Well, that's more
like it. That's a rather
nice, sort of
Swedish-looking design.
What we're going to try and do with
this house is instead of, as you would
normally, designing
the whole space and
then finding the
furniture to fit in it,
what we're going to try and do is
start with the furniture, assemble a small
number of pieces
that have a look about
them, and then design
the room around them.
Now, this is the kind of thing I'm
looking for. This is straight out of
Harold Wilson's 1960s.
It's a sideboard, very unfashionable
now, but actually a beautifully made
piece of furniture.
It's got ash veneer, rather attractive
wooden handles, a bit of marquetry,
and if it's cleaned up, it could be
a very beautiful piece of furniture.
Oh, look. Icons of the '60s cocktail sets.
These are Soda Streams.
Great things, great shapes. I think I
can put these to good use. Just watch.
With the furniture
chosen, I really ought
to turn my attention
to the overall design.
I'm not a fan of TV decorating makeovers.
I was hoping I'd never have to do
one, in fact.
But here I've found myself about to
embark on one, although I suppose it's
not really a makeover, is it?
It's a start over.
This is assuming they've
finished putting in the walls.
Shop.
Hello, Paul. Ben, how are you?
Good. There's a notice out there that
says "Tape jointer's well done." This
looks great.
That cost a lot of money.
Well, now that you're all gifted
amateurs, isn't there a danger that,
because you're not professional
plasters and prepared to just come in and
just toss it out, that you're
just being too perfect about it?
You're being too You know what I mean?
Too loving and too caring.
I think that's part of the problem that
we've had all the way along in every
aspect of the build, is not so much
that we're insanely perfectionist about
it, but not having a
background in building.
We don't really know what's
Do you know what I mean? We don't know what
the parameters are.
You don't know when
it stops being merely
acceptable and just
starts being rough.
Yeah, exactly. So I think we've ended
up spending more time doing a better
job than needed to be done.
That's what I mean.
Yes.
Well, apart from this one frame, it's
all boarded out now. Floorboards are
down. They look very nice. They're fine.
It looks smaller than when I saw it
last because this wall's gone in, but.
nevertheless it's still a sizeable house.
The first thing I want to do is sketch
out the dimensions of the room and
see where the furniture can fit in.
A necessary step because I'm having
to make do with what I've found and
design around it.
The object isn't to
decorate and accessorise
the room as if it were
someone's home.
Rather, I want to make a kind of
template, a simply decorated structure,
including paint, lighting
and a few furnishings,
that could inspire the hedgehogs and
help them imagine what their own no
doubt highly individual
homes will look like.
As I sort out the interior of the
house, the co-op are pulling together to
get the exterior of the
show home looking good.
Now that means getting a turf roof.
Because the lorry's been unable to
make it up the hill, the turf is having
to be unloaded into Tony's car
to be transported to the house.
Well, that's the idea anyway.
The grass roof gives everyone an
idea of how the house will look in the end.
But I don't have time
to watch the grass
grow. I've got to get
decorating inside.
Now, the walls. I did think of papering
them, but we discounted that on
grounds of cost more than anything else.
And so we've opted for paint.
And in keeping with the hedgehog co-op
philosophy, I've got green paint.
That is, sustainable paint, not
green in colour. It's actually a sort of
pale mauve in colour.
This is a paint which is made out of
the usual things, pigments like China
Clay and chalk and iron
oxide, which give it the colour.
But what's specifically green about
it is the binder, which is made out of
latex. That's from a rubber tree.
But the point about it really
is that it goes on like a dream.
The colour scheme is simple. Two
shades of pale, slightly muddy mauve that
are almost off-white.
I'm painting alternate walls in the
two shades to subtly emphasise those
interesting changes of planes in the room.
But I'm not going
to paint the furniture.
The wood is far
too beautiful to hide.
Just a quick scrub
up with wire wool, a
wash down, and a
wax will do the trick.
If there's one idea that this scheme
embodies, it's that you can decorate on
a ridiculously cheap budget.
We've got second-hand furniture from
Emmaus, which we've lovingly polished
and revivified back
to its original condition.
And that looks fantastic in the setting.
It looks very appropriate, it's
very minimal, it looks very Swedish,
it looks very, you know, 1960s, retro,
whatever you want to call it.
But it looks good. We've also got
just great sheets of rice paper here,
which I've just literally
stuck onto a Baton.
And they hung on
the wall in place of
pictures. They cost
just a pound or so.
We've got light fittings which cost
£2.50 from an agricultural supplier
that we've sprayed with car paint.
We've got table lamps that I've
adapted from the siphons that I bought at
Emmaus and stuck some shades
on the top and sprayed those down.
I think they look very
funky and contemporary.
And for decoration, for accessories,
instead of expensive accoutrements from
high street shops, we've got stuff
that we've picked up off the beach.
Things like this great
lump of driftwood
that's still damp
from this morning.
And pebbles.
There you are. What do you think?
Sort of East meets West, beachcomber, eco,
retro, soft minimalism look? Ish?
The hedgehog philosophy
is that no one can
move in before all the
houses are finished.
Besides, this is just a show
home for hedgehog living.
The small bedroom has
one sunshine yellow wall.
The large bedroom has one lavender wall.
It's a way of introducing a strong
colour to a room.
By painting each wall a different
shade, I emphasise the interesting shape
of the living room.
A few homey touches.
The 50s kitchen table
gave me the blue wall colour.
And I found an office
cupboard that looks as though
it could be a designer-label
wardrobe. Almost.
Excluding the kitchen,
the furnishings cost £580.
This house may still be short of a
veranda, but it is, as architects say,
well-mannered and entirely
appropriate for a coastal setting.
But not many people
would be prepared
to spend two years
building their home.
This project might seem an
extraordinary thing to do to get a secured
tenancy, and going to rather extreme
lengths to get to know your neighbours.
These people feel it's their only option.
But I can't help wondering if they
still feel it's worth it.
So what do you think then?
I think it's pretty good.
It's very different to
your house, isn't it?
Yeah.
Have you got the floor in yet?
No, ours is a shell at
the moment, isn't it?
I haven't even got a floor down,
it's just joists everywhere, I say.
It's inspiring to see it like this,
isn't it? Because it just makes you
really want to get on and get it finished.
Yeah, well it doesn't depress you.
Not at all, not at all.
Sometimes you lose track of what
you're doing, really. You come up here
every day and
hammering nails in and
stuff, and you sort
of lose track of it.
It's actually going to be somewhere
to live than to spend your days.
How has it been the past year, two
years, whatever it is? I mean, you've got
your hands full, haven't you, you two?
We have.
We've been through this lot, haven't we?
We have, haven't we? This lot.
It's been totally manic and we're
completely exhausted almost all the time
because we're trying to fit so much in.
Yeah.
I mean, it's worth it, you know,
you can see it's a beautiful place, you
know, it's gorgeous.
This is, I mean, probably the
biggest thing I've ever done in my life.
Most commitment I've
ever had to anything
and it should have
a pay-off, a house.
A permanent house for Poppy to grow up in.
What have you got out of this build?
Well, I'd like to continue with
carpentry, actually, I want to carry on.
You do?
Yeah.
So now you've got the body of skills
together, you want to take it somewhere
and, because you've got,
you've got builders' hands there.
I do, yeah.
Look at them.
That's one of the consequences,
actually, of building a house.
Eventually, when it's done, I can look
towards maybe more education and a
job at the end of it and some money.
Wow.
I remember that stuff.
So would you do it again?
Build a house.
I'd have to have a really, really
good reason for doing it again.
Yeah.
Actually.
I wouldn't want to do it again.
I don't want to see a saw, I don't want
to see a hammer or a set square or a
carpenter's pencil, do
you know what I mean?
We feel like we've built
now, we've done that one.
Do something else, there's
lots more to do, isn't there?
I think we'd do it again, wouldn't we?
Oh, yeah.
Really?
Yeah, but not for ages, isn't it?
Not for years.
Like when we're really old, yeah.
Yeah.
As long as we can pick up a hammer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what happens to this amazing
cooperative, this group,
what happens to all
these relationships when you move in?
Because everything's going to change.
I mean, you'll be neighbours
there, not a working party.
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting.
I can't help but think that we could
probably all deserve a break from each
other a little bit when we've finished.
And obviously the fact that we're
not going to be involved in what is
essentially a building
firm together anymore
will be good for our
sense of distance
and our sense of individuality.
It has been a tremendous amount of
hard work and will continue to be until
all the houses have finished
and the sites are landscaped
and we've got to move in and
there's a lot of hard work to come.
But I'm sure it will have been worthwhile
at the very end of it because the
things that I've gained from it,
I don't know how you'd actually
go out and you couldn't buy them.
You know, it's a tremendous experience.
This is one of the most
exciting self-builds I've seen.
It's not the most ground-breaking of
designs but in environmental terms it's
sustainable and it is a method
of build that anyone can do.
But of course it
requires a fantastic
commitment over years,
not weeks or even months.
And I keep having to remind myself
that these people are not the owners of
these buildings.
They're just renting.
If the words 'grand design' suggest
anything, it's that a house isn't just a
building, it represents an ideal, a dream.
These people got together just to
put a roof over their heads and in doing
that they're managing to build houses,
build a community and build a future.
Next week we're in Buckinghamshire
with a couple who are building a
strikingly contemporary
house next to
a disused water
tower in the Green Belt.