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| George and I at the What House? Awards 2013 |
My grandfather was in property – he was a builder – and before the days of health and safety I used to spend a lot of my time as a kid on building sites. When most kids were playing with bulldozers, I was in one!
In terms of building design, that came when I was a little older. As soon as I was able to jump on the
bus into town, I used to go and just sketch different buildings. I always had a pencil in my hand.
You now front a number of successful TV shows but the two which you became known for where The Home Show and The Restoration Man, how do they compare?
As an architect I just love to transform buildings. In The Restoration Man we have seen some incredible buildings being converted into homes. Sometimes these buildings have been sitting redundant for 50 or 60 years, but converting them gives them a whole new lease of life – it’s a great example of sustainable living.
In The Home Show, it’s about taking a very ordinary house and bringing it into the 21st century.
How do you feel about the number of old buildings you see in this country that have been forgotten about and left to deteriorate?
There are about 5,000 buildings on the Buildings at Risk register that are in danger of collapse, and that doesn’t even account for the tens of thousands which lie empty but are not on the list. They’re all simple, humble gems of history, but people have just lost interest or forgotten about them The Restoration Man shows how you can build anything into something – it’s easy to transform something into something else.
Well, easy when it’s been built well in the first place. I think we build too temporarily these days because our needs change, but older buildings have been built to last.
Has anyone been really disappointed with what you’ve done to their property in The Home Show?
They’ve all been really happy with what we’ve done. There was one couple who were disappointed that we didn’t finish the en suite bathroom. Sometimes we get really big properties and really small budgets, and there’s always a risk you’re going to find problems like rot or structural damage, which you have to spend the money on. It’s not a makeover show, we’re not just putting on a lick of paint. There are often problems we have to get in there and sort out, and I have a duty of care to do that.
From your experience on the show, what are the most common improvements you make to people’s homes?
It’s usually space issues that we rectify. Houses with lots of corridors or things in the wrong place.
There was one where the bathroom was off the kitchen, which is very common in a lot of houses and just
doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s just knocking down a wall. For example, how many of us actually use a formal dining room? The kitchen is really where we live these days, so opening this up to create a kitchen/dining room is common.
Are there any projects you have particularly enjoyed doing?
They’ve all be amazing so I shouldn’t really say I have a favourite, but there was one project in series one of The Restoration Man – an ice house in Scotland on Lochgoilhead. The building used store ice that they
took from the loch and cut up. The fishermen would catch salmon and then store it in the ice house, which could act as a fridge. This eccentric man, Laird Henderson, bought it from a farmer for £6,000 and
then did it up with about £80,000 to £90,000, turning it into a two/three-bedroom house. It was really spectacular, the front of the building was all glass – he would say it reminded him of a Foxes Glacier Mint.
- The Ideal Home Show is at Olympia London from 20 March to 6 April 2015
This interview first appeared in the Surrey Advertiser in March 2011
