Grand Designs Wirral House 2016

We bought our rather unloved 1960's dormer bungalow in 2010, moving from a little townhouse locally. The bungalow was on a modest yet pleasant plot, overgrown but surrounded by mature gardens and old trees, which were appealing. The house had 3 bedrooms in the roof, and a fourth downstairs, used as an office and playroom. It was a nice home for us and two young kids, but in poor condition, hardly insulated, and crying out for a project...

After gaining planning for a couple of schemes adding extensions, we realised the best bang for our buck would be to change tack and gain permission to build a better upstairs, and project out over the drive to add 2 more bedrooms - essentially a complete knockdown and rebuild of the upstairs. The planners were happy, and so we launched into this adventure of creating a very modern looking building, with fake cantilever section, retaining the slab and ground floor walls. The new house with its flat roof would be no higher than the original, and keep largely the same footprint.

We assembled a team (local architect Stephen Bromilow, local builder Graeme Mealor) and moved out into a rented flat in 2015, and the teardown started. Just before this happened, I decided to contact Grand Designs to see if they were interested, just to be able to say 'I tried....'

To our surprise, they said yes. Seems like they were looking out for a lower budget project to follow, and liked the fact it was an extension rather than another high-budget new build. Well, I say 'to our surprise', but seeing as I hadn't told my wife Rosie, for her it was more shock and disbelief. She came round to the idea pretty quickly. Luckily.

The project progressed well, with no major problems. Our intention was to build the watertight shell, and finish the interior at our leisure, when budget permitted. In fact, due to the filming, we secured some good deals and upgraded in lots of areas, such as extra insulation and some eco features such as low temperature underfloor heating, MVHR ventilation, solar thermal panels and so on. However we agreed to a tight filming deadline, which meant we focussed on getting the exterior upgraded and finished, and the downstairs as finished as we could, at the expense of anything being done upstairs. We moved back in and camped out up there, actually a lot of fun.

After the final filming in late 2016, we settled in to our big, warm, partially finished house, and balanced family life with a busy time in our business. Over the years we tackled the remaining jobs inside ourselves, fitting out bedrooms, installing bathrooms, connecting up the equipment and only using trades when required. We learnt plenty along the way. and found it very satisfying.

2023 saw us, at last, adding the garden room extension we had been planning from the start. This links the house with the garden which is 5 feet below floor level, and gives us a lovely bright extra reception room, and I found space for a little bar too.

Finally, in early 2025, we finished inside, and could no longer ignore the garden, which had essentially been a builder's yard and wasteland for the past years. The final push saw us building rockeries, new deck spaces, landscaping and planting.

Kevin and the Grand Designs team returned at the end of the summer, and filmed a revisit show, broadcast in November 2025.