A Grand Designs homeowner has left viewers shocked with his ‘nightmare’ renovation of an old coastguard’s cottage that took five years longer than planned.
Zahid and Ferzana from Leeds are the first couple to attempt an ambitious transformation as the show returns to Channel 4 for its much anticipated 25th series.
The business-owning couple sought the advice of host Kevin McCloud to transform their ‘ugly, ghastly carbuncle’ of an old coastguard’s cottage on the East Yorkshire coast into a three-bedroom family home.
From the start, the ‘nightmare’ project was met with unexpected hurdles – meaning it ended up taking five years longer than planned – and went over budget.
A couple on Grand Designs spent years transforming an ‘ugly’ coastguard’s cottage into a three-bedroom family home on the East Yorkshire coast
Zahid and Ferzana from Leeds were the first people to feature on the new series of Grand Designs as the series celebrates 25 years (their kitchen, pictured)
The couple suffered many setbacks during their project, which set out to create a spacious family area and three bedrooms
The couple’s seaside home now features panoramic windows which look out onto the coastline
The house suffered in its project management as Zahid failed to make detailed plans as to how the structure was to be built
Zahid had neglected to make any detailed plans, meaning the steel structure and windows didn’t fit – while an objection over planning permission almost derailed the project completely.
Despite all odds, Kevin declared the final result to be ‘breathtaking’, with the stunning property offering panoramic views of the North Sea.
Zahid purchased the old watchtower for £175,000 at auction after it had been abandoned for a decade, even bidding for it while his daughter was giving birth in hospital.
He hoped to keep the building’s historic and unique structure while modernising it, but neglected to make any detailed building plans.
Observing the new purchase, Kevin said it was: ‘A horrible mixture of 60s functionality and Edwardian house. Plenty of people I’m sure, would love to see it come down.’
From the start, the project – initially only meant to last ten months – was certainly ambitious.
Zahid sought to demolish the tower, which shared utilities and wall with the next door neighbours, while building a new structure with an overhang and doubling the area.
But nine months into the ten-month project, and the family had only just started demolishing the original structure due to an unfortunate ground survey.
A second blow quickly followed as their son Yusuf, who had been spearheading the project, decided to leave.
The couple’s home towers over others in the area and features floor-to-ceiling windows in each storey
The couple’s view reveals the vast coastline, its scenery and the horizon
Although the house is set on a residential street, it backs onto a cliff near the coast
The couple’s home, which ran five years over in its project time, features modern bathrooms
Zahid was then at risk of losing his £200,000 investment after a planning enforcement officer shut the project down completely.
He had applied for a conversion – but all that was left of the original structure was the wall shared with their neighbour.
After risking losing everything, Zahid had a new planning request accepted and the project was able to continue.
But the lack of detailed plans for the builders led to more issues.
Zahid spent £30,000 on 120 pieces of steel to form two floating walls, described as a ‘jenga-like structure’ by builders.
The lack of precision in the instructions left a gap between one wall and the rest of the frame.
Key pieces of glass for the panoramic windows didn’t fit, while the company fitting the glass had missed an email asking for bird proofing as it had gone into their junk folder.
The ‘window nightmare’ lasted a whopping four years and cost Zahid £84,000, pushing him over his budget.
The final result saw the coastguard’s cottage completely transformed for a total of £375,000 – five years behind schedule.
Kevin was wowed by the impressive overhang, spacious interiors, and iconic panoramic sea views, while keeping a nod to the building’s original purpose.
Kevin said: ‘It absolutely speaks of what was here before. This building still has the spirit of the coastguard’s station about it. It’s quite heroic, the way it looks out to sea. It’s reborn.’
Ferzana, Zahid’s wife, added: ‘I love it. I just love everything about it. The windows, the doors, the glass. Breathtaking.’
The family were left with a beautiful home to spend time with their three children and four grandchildren.
It comes after Kevin said the story of Grand Designs has become part of his own in an interview ahead of the new series airing.
‘It’s become me, and I’ve become it,’ McCloud, 65, originally from Bedforshire said.
The couple’s home features three bedrooms (one of the bedrooms, pictured)
During the project, which suffered several setbacks, Zahid was criticised for making ‘Jenga-like’ plans for builders to follow
Despite the couple’s long project which ran five years over the projected completion time, Kevin McCloud was mesmerised by their house when it was finally finished
The wooden staircase in the house is visible from the outside thanks to the home’s floor to ceiling windows
The house was finished with a modern, contemporary feel with minimalist decoration
‘I think it’s one of those big adventures we all imagine we might go on, even if we don’t.
‘And it seems to tease out every human emotion, every human drive, the good and the bad. And that, I think, is why people watch – it’s storytelling.
‘We have villains in the form of mud and money and rain, and then there are the heroes – the craftspeople, builders, inventors and engineers – who are just trying to do good stuff, and in that sense it’s no different to listening to somebody tell a story in a tribe 3,000 years ago, sat around a campfire.’
Cementing the Grand Designs silver jubilee is a new book, Grand Designs At 25, featuring the most stand-out builds, chosen by McCloud.
He thinks the book’s turned out ‘wonderfully well’ but hesitated to go as far as saying he’s proud of Grand Designs and what he and it have achieved over a quarter of a century, instead opting to say he’s ‘at peace with it’.
‘I don’t see myself as any different from the audience. We all love design and making stuff and building and architecture and construction, and we all love, in a way, the mud and seeing something change for the better,’ McCloud reasoned.
‘When I say I’ve made my peace with it, what I mean is I have no distinction. I just happen to be on that side of the camera, but we’re all sharing the same love and enthusiasm for the same things,’ he added.
So, what does the father-of-four think has changed most during the show’s 25 years?
He said architecture is much more accessible than it used to be, and added: ‘Sustainability has become central to the agenda. It wasn’t part of government policy 25 years ago, but it now is.’
Costs have of course risen, and – often as a consequence of that – houses are taking much longer to build, McCloud observed. Aside from general inflation, he said the biggest price rises have been for land, and the increased cost of building materials as a result of the pandemic and Brexit.
‘So 15 or 20 years ago, to build a decent self-build home from the slab up would cost about £3,000 per square-metre, and that was doing a nice job,’ said McCloud.
‘Now it would be £4,500-£5,000 per square-metre. So in 15 years, it’s gone up by 50 per cent , but the big hikes have happened in the last 10 years.’
Despite the price rises, people aren’t cutting corners on their Grand Designs.
‘They’re thinking their way out of trouble,’ McCloud explained. ‘Designing better buildings, making them a bit smaller, being careful and clever. But they’re taking much longer, that’s the trouble.’
He estimated that in the past, on average it took two to four years to build a Grand Designs house. ‘Now it’s taking four to six years, and all the projects we’re planning to air this year, it’s like, when is it going to be ready? So that’s had a big impact on us.
‘What people are doing is trying to build for the same money, so they’re trying to do as much of it themselves as they can. They’re trying to rationalise their designs and preserve quality, and they’re taking forever.’
Another change he’s noticed has been the ‘increasing Americanisation’ of housing, and this ‘bigger is better’ ethos is linked to a major bugbear of McCloud’s.
‘I know people, when they build a grand design, often think the word grand in the title refers to the size of the building – it’s got to be huge. And I didn’t used to have to do this, but I now go to great pains to say to people, ‘grand’ is all about the vision,’ he explained.
‘If you don’t have a vision for either the design or the technology, or for pushing boundaries, or trying stuff which nobody’s done before, then we’ll probably be less interested to make a programme.
‘Size isn’t everything – size is almost irrelevant. It’s about the grand scale of imagination, not physical space. I think the one thing that architecture has shown me over my life is that size does not equal space.’
For example, you can create a small building with a lofty ceiling and ‘a view of the heavens that gives you contact with infinity’, he said, or a well-designed and ergonomic house can become ‘what seems like the most spacious home as a result’.
There’s no particular Grand Designs project that has stood out above all others for McCloud, but he points out: ‘My favourite ones are always the most intriguing, difficult, the longest, the ones that are complex in terms of how they’re brought into being, but sometimes the simplest in design.’
He can’t deny that sometimes the projects are ‘a bit nuts’ – but that is part of the lure.
Kevin said: ‘Sometimes I look at the project dispassionately and think I’ve got a job to communicate this idea without making it sound bonkers. But it’s entertaining if it is slightly bonkers.
‘On the one hand, you want to make stuff accessible to viewers,’ he added. ‘On the other hand, so much of Grand Designs is about portraying eccentricity and people moving to the margins of society and doing their own thing. It’s important to remember that what they’re doing is a bit nuts, and the rest of us are at home on the sofa.’
And it’s hard not to admire people for following their dreams, even if their visions are a bit ‘bonkers’.
‘There are plenty of people not suited to building their own home – it requires huge reserves of patience and stamina and tolerance, and you need to be a very adept human being.
‘Of course, the vast majority of our viewers are not ever going to do this – but that’s not why they’re watching. They’re not watching because it’s a manual, they’re watching because they’re trying to understand the journey,’ said McCloud.
‘But I think most people are watching just for the craziness of it. Just for the, ‘What are they going to do next?’.’
