Kevin McCloud has truly seen it all on Grand Designs.
In the 25 years since the Channel 4 show began, the presenter has witnessed a man’s marriage end over a disastrous renovation, a home left abandoned over mounting bills and couples plunged into thousands of pounds of debt.
But the 65-year-old’s real design bugbear? It is when old buildings get ‘torn apart before your eyes’ because of poor planning and execution, he told Metro.co.uk ahead of Grand Designs Live.
He explained: ‘The things that upset me perhaps more than anything else is when the original objective [falls by the wayside].
‘If the finished building is a weak imitation or a poor relation of the proposal, then that’s disappointing because the finished building ought to be better, not worse.
‘Occasionally, you just see where things have gone wrong; it’s usually because of financial problems. People hadn’t budgeted for things, and they run out of cash, and things get horribly compromised.
‘And so you see beauty literally being torn apart before your eyes. And that’s difficult, particularly with old buildings.’
But it’s not all disaster, debt and divorce. One particular renovation, from over twenty years ago, still strikes a chord with viewers.
That project is Ben Law’s charming fairytale-style house in the woodlands of West Sussex. The build cost him just £28,000 and Kevin said both that property – and Ben himself – sparked a ‘romantic response’.
He elaborated: ‘The thing about the Ben Law Project is that a huge number of men wanted to be Ben Law and a huge number of women wanted to be with Ben.’
Kevin is still in touch with Ben and believes he still lives in the charming wooden house.
Another property that has fascinated viewers is Kevin’s own. But the architect has never satisfied their curiosity, wanting to preserve the ‘mystique’, until now… perhaps.
Over Zoom, he panned the camera around to show me his surroundings, saying I was ‘privileged’ (I felt it!) as he had never shown the room to a journalist before.
I can report it was beige and filled with brown boxes. Kevin said he moved three years ago and they were a ‘temporary arrangement.’
He has also been previously partial to interior design trends, including Feng Shui, which he ‘did’ a couple of decades ago, at its peak trendiness.
There has also been a somewhat bizarre interest in Kevin’s coats on Grand Designs. He described his outfits on the show as like ‘school uniform’ and sticks to navy blue, warm, practical numbers.
While some fans estimate he must have hundreds of coats collected from more than two decades on the show, he said he only owns four. ‘I wear the same clothes a lot,’ he said.
But Kevin is not always in his trademark sleek attire- even he sometimes gets crisp crumbs down his front.
He recalled: ‘I walked into a really posh hotel in Manchester last week and I was wearing my work clothes, I hadn’t shaved and I asked a question about my reservation and I honestly think the girl behind the desk thought I was off the street. Literally. A homeless person. An old man coming in unshaven in dirty clothes.
‘I had also been sitting in the back of a car and I’d been eating some crisps and they were down my pullover. It was not a good look.’ Hopefully, I haven’t shattered another of Kevin’s mystiques…
Back onto property, then. His one piece of advice for would-be renovators that will ‘add value’ to your home: don’t keep up with the Joneses.
Kevin said: ‘I’ve felt for about 40 years that if you want to do something do it with passion. Don’t do it because your neighbors have done it and don’t do it because you think you should do it.
‘So my advice to anybody wanting to add value to their home is don’t make it look like everybody else’s.
‘Any estate agent will say paint the whole thing some fashionable colour but what I will say is paint it whatever colour you want and you love that will make you happy.’
For those wanting more tips from Kevin, he will be at the home exhibition Grand Designs Live in London next month. And he has promised a rollicking good time.
On what attendees can expect, Kevin said: ‘I have come to think of it now as like joining a club. So the reason I say that is because I stepped out onto a stage shortly after lockdown and I had been shielding.
‘I was very nervous about going in front of a live audience again, because at that point, I hadn’t even been on a train or into a shop. And I walked outside and within five minutes, I suddenly realised everybody in the room was there to have a good time.’
With a smile, he added: ‘It was that simple.’
Kevin McCloud was speaking ahead of Grand Designs Live, the premier home exhibition, taking place at London ExCel between 4th and 12th May.
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