What did you miss?
Grand Designs‘ couple Zara and Giuliano realised they made a £15,000 error after ruling out professional help – but in the end, they come in under budget and under schedule leaving fans very impressed.
With no experience of building a house, influencer beauty makeup artist Zara and tech worker Giuliano set their hearts on building a 400-square-metre malthouse-inspired home in Lincolnshire. Zara – who admitted she “thought doing her eyeliner was stressful” – and Giuliano decide to do the measurements for the metal Corten themselves. Where the measurements aren’t 100% accurate, they have to work around the six millimetre gap.
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Impressively though, the couple break the mould of Grand Design disasters as they finish their home under budget at £623,000 instead of £700,000 and two months early by making sacrifices to their comfort and personal lives in one of the show’s firsts. Even Grand Designs’ presenter Kevin McCloud admitted: “I couldn’t have done what they have done.” The response on social media proved viewers at home were equally impressed with their efforts too.
What, how and why?
That’s not to say the couple didn’t overcome a few disasters along the way. Giuliano, who took on the project management of the project because he had experience in this area, admitted the couple didn’t want to do the measurements themselves for the Corten steel in an ideal world because of the element of risk. However, they decided to gamble on it because the site measure was going to cost thousands of pounds.
The IT expert said: “We wouldn’t have ideally liked to have done the measurements ourselves. Cos there’s always a risk whenever you do measurements of it not fitting correctly. But the Corten company we are working with, we asked them how much the site measure would be, and they said it would be thousands and thousands. I’m not paying thousands and thousands for a site measurement.”
He added: “We’ve measured it as accurately as we can. We’ve done our best. We’ll just see.”
McCloud interviewed one of the workers at the factory where they were cutting the metal Corten for the couple. The worker said he admired them “fantastically” for doing it themselves but pointed out by doing their own measurements there was an element of risk if they were wrong.
After four weeks, the couple were worried when they discovered a problem with their measurements they had taken themselves as the installation process began. Giuliano admitted: “Our measurements perhaps could have been a bit more accurate.”
They call on the help of Jim, who initially sold them the land and has been helping with some of the work on the building site. Affectionately, McCloud called him “dependable Jim” because the couple have been able to rely on him during the process of building their house.
Jim explained exactly what the problem was in a piece to camera. He said: “The brick work is out 3mm, the timber frame is out 3mm the other way, combined it’s 6mm, that’s a 6mm gap.” While trying to fit the metal Corten frame to the house, they agreed: “It doesn’t fit!”
It cut to a close up of the tech worker struggling while trying to fit it into place. He said: “Why’s it not going?” He added: “None of us have done anything like this before. I’m not going to lie it is tricky.”
Being honest, Jim admitted it looked “rough” when the metal Corten was in place. McCloud said in the voiceover that it could jeopardise the whole look of the house overall. “Only time and rusting of the steel will tell,” the presenter explained. In the end, it paid off.
Grand Designs house comes in under budget and under schedule
At the end of the episode, McCloud said he was taking his hard hat off to them because of how impressed he was. “It’s come in ahead of program and it’s come in under budget,” he told the couple. “Credit where credit is due. Very, very well done.”
Concluding the episode, he said: “There is a commonly held belief that if you want to build you’ve got to be of mature years. Have wisdom and experience. Be in your 40s or even your 60s. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think you need to be in your 30s, or even your 20s.
“Because yes it does help if you’ve got project management experience, Giuliano does, it does help if you’ve got pioneering spirit, both Zara and him have that, but what’s really needed is energy. And vast amounts of it! And fitness. And stamina. And goodness me, have these two demonstrated this in droves.”
Social media was awash with viewers saying the pair did an excellent job. Among the comments, someone wrote: “Absolutely loved this – kudos to them!”
One person wrote: “Nice to see ‘Influencers’ who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, granted had a bit of luck with the farmers son being an honest builder but they’ve got to be proud of what they produced, even the pergola started to grow on me.”
Another added: “Honestly can’t believe it. Don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode where it’s come in under schedule AND under budget! Looks fantastic, just not a fan of the internal corten.”
A viewer said: “Extremely impressive on all counts, fair play to them.”