Grand Designs: Lizard Peninsula

I'm a big fan of Channel 4's Grand Designs and have been from the start 11 years ago. Now they have covered a lot of very nice, and just plain wrong homes on the show but last Wednesdays episode (20th October 2010) was probably my favourite home they've ever shown.

The show started well due to the designer and builder Kathryn Tyler is a sub 40 year old interior designer from Cornwall. I don;t think enough young people build homes on Grand Designs. It not only brings vision and motivation, but more often than not they don;t have hundreds of thousands of pounds to spend and as a result have to be more frugal.

It also had another great feature of a fascinating build, an unusual plot. In this case, it's at the end of her mothers garden, down a 60ft track at a 1 in 3 angle! This of course causes some problems throughout the show as some lorries can't drive down it.

It's a simple and well thought design. Inspired by modern Scandinavian design it's elegant and crisp yet the strange choice of using rejected bricks, cleverly painted white worked amazingly well. It's the rough and the crisp meeting perfectly. The clever use of these materials and a very well thought out L shape meant a great use of the limited space. The cedar wood cladding will silver with age and only a few weeks after the house was completedyou could see that coming through.

It seems like me, Kathryn has a thing for not only vintage furniture, but also for the sightly rough and overly used. I love her choice of furniture, preferring to buy second hand furniture of Ebay rather than buying brand new. It adds character and personality to the home that new furniture just wouldn't do.

The reason this house is such a success is mainly down to Kathryn (although some credit has to go to the builders and carpenter who did a fantastic job) as her focus, motivation and attention to every last detail has pulled it all together perfectly. And what's more, for the first time in a long time, it came in under budget!

For the £290,000 it cost to build this house, I think Kathryn and boyfriend Chris have got not only a beautiful home and working space, but as Chris mentioned near the end, a vision of Kathryn's head and I agree when he said it was a beautiful place to be and live.