Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud says 'huge errors' were made building ‘saddest house ever' on show
Kevin McCloud has said that 'huge errors' were made with one of the most notorious houses to ever feature on Grand Designs, Chesil Cliff House, but ultimately the story is 'one of redemption'.
If you're a fan of Grand Designs then you might be familiar with Chesil Cliff House, a mansion which took Edward Short a whopping 12 years to build and brought him millions of pounds of debt.
Back in January there were plans from Short to borrow more money to add fixtures and fittings to the house and repair some cracks in the driveway.
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He was also attempting to complete a 'triangle of negotiation' to get the property taken back off the market so he could sell it for more than the £5.25 million price the receivers listed it for.
Chesil Cliff House has sometimes been described as the 'saddest house ever' to feature on Grand Designs due to the toll it took on Ed's life.
One man who's seen plenty of Ed and Chesil Cliff House is Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud, who's seen all sorts of epic builds during his time on the show.
Speaking to LADbible ahead of the Grand Designs Live exhibition, which will be held in London later this year, Kevin gave his verdict on Ed and his house.
He said: "We’ve made two films, a revisit and the original, so I've spent a total of probably 100 hours with Ed in the past 10 years.
“I know him very well now, we talk off air as well as on and I like him a lot. I speak here professionally as a broadcaster, we wouldn't have had such a memorable set of films or original film were it not for Ed’s honesty, his absolute integrity.
“His honesty and his integrity kind of drove the show. In the original film at the end of it we say this is a story of hubris, it's a story of overreaching, it's a story of somebody's life falling apart, their relationships falling apart.
“And he got all that, he was the first to say that. So it didn’t make it hard for me to say that in the closing moments of the film, I didn't feel I was betraying his trust, because he was so open and transparent."
Kevin said that Ed had 'made huge errors' and was 'guilty of overreaching' in trying to build Chesil Cliff House, but through the entire process had 'maintained his integrity' and the Grand Designs presenter thought 'you couldn't fault him'.
In the end Kevin thinks Ed is a 'great human being' and at the end of the day the real story here is 'one of redemption' as he 'demonstrates how resilient human beings can be'.
Mistakes and overreaching are features of many a Grand Designs project, as Kevin told us his advice to anyone undertaking a similar project would be to 'employ good people to help you' as experts such as architects 'always pay for themselves'.
"So many people seem to feel the need to drive everything themselves, to control so many aspects of their lives," Kevin told LADbible.
"It seems to me that knowing yourself usually results in you deciding you want to employ people to make up for the skill shortage you have.
"Then there is this matter of hubris, particularly men wanting to memorialise themselves in a building built up in a grand, silly, overblown, over glamorous... too much."
It's a common feature of Grand Designs that the design is sometimes a little too grand for the builder's budget and capabilities, so it seems as though knowing your limits is a useful skill to have.
Telling us about a recent project that all seemed 'tickety-boo' at first, Kevin explained that after meeting and having a face-to-face chat he realised there was 'no way that she was going to achieve it for the money'.
Despite that she was determined to go ahead anyway and Grand Designs followed her efforts as the build was 'too good' to ignore, leaving McCloud in a position of hoping it 'would work out'.
The presenter compared undertaking a major build to 'joining a cult', and explained that his warnings of a project being beyond the builder's capability were often ignored.
He said: "I've met hundreds of people doing this, written about it, and when I tell people they haven’t got enough money, or that idea isn’t gonna work or it’s gonna take far longer they laugh at me and say 'don’t be ridiculous'.
"Because they have been possessed of a zeal at this point, it's like joining a cult.
"Their eyes glaze over and they look at me and smile benignly as if to say, ‘you know nothing’.
"That’s okay because I'm not in control of the fate of the project they are, and good luck."
McCloud describes himself as a 'real fan of the just enough school' and figuring out what you need instead of trying to build something far beyond your capabilities.
It's at this point in our chat that McCloud taps his nose and tells me he's 'learned to develop this instrument to a very fine level' and it's helped him 'detect when people are bulls**tting'.
That means he can usually tell when a potential Grand Designs project is more trying to promote a business or 'use television as an estate agent so that they can sell the house' than let us watch a house take shape.
As for people who are actually planning on undertaking this sort of project, he recommended that they swing by Grand Designs Live as he described it as 'an extension of that idea' that the show is about making things and not simply buying them.
Whether you want to get things made for your new house or need the expert advice of people who know all about making houses, Grand Designs Live will have what you need.
On top of that, if you go you'll get to explore the 'Grand House', a home they'll build in the exhibition centre that'll show off some impressive ways to combine luxury and a low-carbon home.
If the Grand House takes your fancy then you'll be able to bend the ear of a bunch of people who know all about it, and Kevin reckons 'it's gonna be great'.
Kevin McCloud was speaking ahead of Grand Designs Live, the premier home exhibition, taking place at London ExCel between 4 and 12 May.
Topics: Channel 4, TV and Film, Home
Joe Harker