Grand Designs — Season 23

Kevin McCloud returns to follow more ambitious home-design projects, beginning by meeting adventurous couple Colin and Adele. They have employed a Swedish architect, an Italian interior design company and a Latvian building company to complete the eye-popping curved glass family home in the Manchester suburb where they both grew up.

Kevin McCloud meets Kate and Rob, who have lived in a 1940s prefab house built by Rob's grandfather. Originally designed to be lived in for just 10 years, this factory-built home is well past its sell-by date. Now, Kate and Rob are at last in a position to replace it with a bespoke, modern, warm home - which will also be built in a factory using volumetric modular construction. Over just six weeks, their new house will be manufactured on a production line, complete with insulation, tiling and kitchen installation.

Kevin McCloud meets Dorran, who has taken on the ambitious task of building a super-modern underground home on a hill outside Canterbury. He entrusts the work to a team of contractors, but when delays and rising costs force him to take charge of the build himself, Dorran faces the biggest challenge of his life, juggling his time between the site and his work as a ship's master out on the North Sea. However, having promised the house to his wife and children, he knows that failure is not an option.

Kevin McCloud meets Zimbabwean-born Davi and Matt from Australia, who are determined to create a home to reflect their backgrounds, so set out to build a house in the Chess Valley with a radical multicultural design, which is especially daring for their commuter-belt suburb. Despite their inexperience and the technical difficulty of the steeply sloping site, Davi and Matt manage the venture themselves. But it's not long before the problems begin.

Kevin meets Mike and Sarah, who bought a remote smallholding in the Derbyshire Dales, somewhere to rear animals and provide a home for themselves and their elderly parents. Kevin follows the couple as they set out to build a 21st-century version of a historic Derbyshire longhouse. Enormous, corrugated and with a highly complex roof shape, it was never going to be an easy build. But soon they face delays and their schedule begins to slide. However, that is nothing compared with the problems of a more personal nature that hit the project.

Kevin McCloud meets retired racehorse breeder John and his wife Helen in Dunstable. The couple met at Newbury races in 2005 and wed two years later, living together in a 17th-century farmhouse until illness struck in 2018. Helen had a catastrophic stroke, severely affecting her mobility and leaving her with aphasia, which affects her ability to communicate. Constrained by the steep stairs, narrow doorways and changes in level of their current home, John resolved to make a big change in their lives with the purchase of a nearby two-acre plot. Following the demolition of an old, dilapidated house on site, a new high-tech accessible pavilion, complete with wildlife garden, will be built in its place for £1.3million.

Kevin meets south London chef Corinne, who loves to entertain and is rustling up plans for a beautifully crafted, double-kitchen home designed around her love of cooking. The end-of-terrace plot is on a hill and surrounded by woodland within a strict conservation area, so it won't be an easy build. But having come through a divorce and cancer treatment, Corinne sees the house as vital on so many levels, not least as an opportunity to create a space that represents her new lease of life. 

In 2011, Edward and Hazel set out to build a lighthouse on the north Devon coast. By 2019, they were near bankruptcy with just a rusting shell. Three years on, has anything changed?

Kevin McCloud revisits Vicky and Ed, who in 2015 broke free from the shackles of their hectic London lives to try to build a new life in the Somerset countryside. With a budget of just over £200,000, they set out to transform an old derelict cowshed into a 21st-century off-grid smallholding. With no building experience or project manager, they took on this dramatic transformation themselves, learning building techniques from the internet.

In 2015 Paul and Carol set out to build an eco-friendly and energy-saving timber fortress in Bolton, on the edge of the wild West Pennine Moors. With extreme weather challenges, a tight schedule and a £350k budget they did not make their goal of finishing the project in 15 months. Six years later Kevin McCloud revisits to find out if their home is finally finished.

Kevin McCloud visits Sue and Martin who set out to renovate two 16th and 18th-century barns in 1999. Without conventional plans, surveys and specifications the project was delayed a number of times. The original deadline of Christmas 2000 came and went and by September 2002 the build was still not finished. Kevin returns two decades later to see if the house is finally complete.