Grand Designs

Lincoln Miles and his wife Lisa Traxler modernise a stone-clad bungalow on the Isle of Wight.

Helen and Chris Seymour Smith get planning permission to build a house in open countryside.

In Woodbridge, Lucie Fairweather and Nat McBride plan a responsible, low impact, ecologically sensitive home for their young family. Nat tragically succumbs to cancer early in the build, leaving Lucie to continue on her own with a downsized version of the original design.

Kevin follows Simon and Jill Bennett's conversion of two timber framed barns. However, one has turned out to be a medieval guild hall.

Lindsay and Jonathan Belsey hopes to build a house that aesthetically pleasing, cheap to run and ecologically sound.

Following Kathryn Tyler as she designs and builds her Scandinavian-inspired eco house in Falmouth.

Alan Dawson attempts to build house like a giant Meccano set, in that he will make the pieces in a workshop and then assemble it all on site.

Robert and Milla Gaukroger plan to extend an old 1980s house overlooking Windermere.

Kevin returns to see how Daren Howarth and Adi Nortje's project has fared four years after they decided to build an earth-sheltered home in Brittany.

Kevin returns to see whether Bill Bradley has completed the work on his two timber houses in south London.

Bill and Sarah Bradley are a couple whose dream of living mortgage-free rests on building not one, but two timber framed houses in south London. Building on the site of Bill's old wood workshop, the couple plan to sandwich the houses in between two existing rows, leaving them overlooking, and overlooked, by over twenty neighbours. To get around these difficulties Bill and Sarah's houses will use oblique windows, skylights and double height glazed courtyards to create two beautiful but private homes. But before long the budget is soaring and Bill's desire to go more luxurious and high spec leaves their dream of debt free living looking ever more remote.

Six years after his first visit, Kevin returns to see how the O'Hare's fared with their split-level home cascading down a practically vertical hillside in Belfast.

This is Belfast, one of the great cities of the industrial revolution, and home to Thomas and Dervla O'Hare. They've lived here for 18 years, and although they still love their tiny cottage for its compactness, they're about to build something much, much bigger. They're building a 21st century answer to the Roman villa, with a copper roof, glass and concrete walls and vast amounts of living space all arranged around a central courtyard. In order to cope with the incredibly steep slope the house was divided across three levels. At the base of the building there is a garage and all the utilities. Through the front door a double-width processional staircase leads up to the living and dining areas.

Kevin McCloud returns to see the Sampson family in France.

Mark and Deborah (Debbie) Sampson and daughter, Tilley, like to practice an ecologically sound way of life. Together, the family's over-riding desire is to make a statement about who they are and how they choose to live their life, and to be accepted for the way they are by the local people.

Over ten years ago, as one of Grand Design's first projects, Andrew Tate and Deborah Mills found a site with a monstrous, dilapidated, 100 foot tall water tower on it. Unusually, they saw it as the perfect spot to build a contemporary family home and convert the old water tower into a seven-storey bedroom wing. Andrew is a commercial architect and so the modern new build went up in just four months, using fast-track methods alongside unconventional building materials. However, things were not so easy when it came to the three feet thick water tower: a doorway they expected to be made in two days, took two weeks. Kevin went back to see Andrew and Deborah three years after they had moved into their contemporary extension, but they had still made no progress on the water tower, and were living with minimal bedroom space. Now Kevin returns again to see if the water tower conversion has finally happened, and if their dream home has worked out just as they envisaged all that time ago.

Kevin returns to see how Pru and Richard Irvine fared one-and-a-half years after they began building their bespoke home in the Midlothian countryside.

A couple, Pru and Richard Irvine, decide to build a family home on an industrial site in the Midlothian countryside complete with lime kilns, but are only allowed to do so if they become custodians of the kilns and their house blends in with the landscape. This proves challenging for the pair as they want to build a modern property that could be seen as a blot on the landscape to the locals. The task is made all the more demanding when they underestimate the long hours needed to be a project manager.