My Bungalow Bliss

Clean your ears it was 220K

Simply the sound of the conversation when Hugh visited the finished build and spoke to them in the open plan kitchen/living room with concrete floors, granite surfaces and very little to deaden the sound.

Incorrect. Their initial budget was 130/140k. They upped it to 250k after the architects design came back then added another 70k for the floors/walls issue.

It’s all mad money really. Felt kinda sorry for them as they didn’t really seem like they wanted to go all in with it but got caught up in the whole thing. I wonder if being on the programme adds pressure to really overextend yourself?

312k to end up with a kitchen/ dining/ sitting room with a couple of big windows in , let's face it a very modest size bungalow, is not very good value in my opinion. Cool for the architects who got paid for designing it and can put it in their portfolio but the owners a left with a nice bill for not alot of house.

This winner does these shoes do the architects credibility any good. They were already over budget before they even started - should have been sent back to their office to come up with a plan that met the constraints.

The proposed plan was good, but underfloor heating required digging up the floor, but who checked the foundations? Answer - no-one. It was built on a raft which they just dug up - putting 70 grand onto the build cost - oops.

My thoughts exactly, surely an examination of the foundations should have decided the build not the other way around. Why wasn't underfloor heating ruled out completely due to the raft like nature of the foundation and the cost. Raft foundations while not perfect are adequate and have stood for generations in much older houses, the house was not falling down due to mica in the concrete like houses in Donegal built barely a decade ago.

No need, maybe you need to rewatch it, it was 120k-140k initial budget

There's a lot of self-congratulation in the opening two programmes and there's two sets of families left with massive debts for, to be honest, not particularly fabulous homes. It suits the programme makers but is it really in the best interests of the families left with the bill? Dermot Bannon was big into this approach early in his Room to Improve series which usually went the way of [Dermot meets family -> they tell him their requirements and budget -> Dermot comes back with a spec that double the budget -> they scramble to get the money -> everybody claims to be happy at the end]

A "wow" transformation suits the progamme makers even if, arguably, it's not really that wow at the end. There seems to be an element of gas lighting going on by Hugh as well with his comments to the families.

I agree with you about Hugh. I don't really like him.

In all his shows he comes across as smug, patronizing and b*tchy.

I suspect this program has done more to put people off buying a doer upper than anything else. we need irish homes under the hammer rip everything out and replace for 20k 😄

Condensation may be on the outside. We have triple glazed windows and this happens....we nearly had heart failure the first morning it happened after the windows were installed.

Will be interesting to see if they will do a piece on the retrofit. There was one posted for last week's house.

I thought that the drone shot passing over the finished house looked terrible, the roof was as it was at the start all black and dirty looking, wonder why they would not have power hosed it before the start at least it would have looked better. I thought it took away from the finished refurb .

There were a few details in the finished house that looked very poorly done. The blue tiles around the bathroom weren't centred properly (check around the window and bath detail: should be an equal gap at both sides). The wooden panelling looked scruffy along the floor junction and the front door. If you're paying big money, details like those mentioned need to be perfect.

I always think it's a poor reflection on the architect if they cannot stick to the design brief: one of the main considerations is budget. If the design doesn't come within 10% or so of the budget, then you're not doing what you were asked to do.

And as a few have mentioned, the frosted glass on the shower "wall" at the end of the corridor: come off it, that's just ridiculous.