Grand Designs Show Summary, Upcoming Episodes and TV Guide

Adam and Tassy take on an abandoned water tower - a concrete column stretching over 20 metres into the Northamptonshire sky - and turn it into a fun family home. Their radical design includes a concrete interior with curved walls, slides, secret rooms, a fireman's pole and - up in the tank itself - a swimming pool and a sky garden. The plan is to sell their terraced house and get a mortgage to raise £400,000 and do most of the conversion work themselves - even though they have two young children already and a third on the way. It's wildly ambitious and gets off to a slow start when a steel reinforced floor takes forever to excavate, and they have to build a sound wall to reduce the hum from a nearby electricity substation. As concrete pours, their walls start to leak and it looks like their water tower doesn't want to be lived in without a concrete-soaked battle of biblical proportions

Holistic therapist Kara and electrician Jonny are building a striking stone and zinc four-bedroom family home in the rolling hills of West Yorkshire, for themselves and their two young children. The need to build has been motivated by Kara's recent paralysis, caused by a rare autoimmune condition. Their ambition for the house is enormous, as Kara wants to create a home that is not only beautiful but will help her regain some independence. With money tight, Jonny needs to take on a lot of the work himself. As the build progresses, and despite the challenges coming thick and fast, compromise is not an option with both form and function so essential. Building their single storey pushes both Kara and Jonny to the edge of their emotional and physical reserves, but if they can pull it off, it might just redefine what accessible design means

Kevin McCloud follows the progress of Zahid and Ferzana from Leeds as they set out to transform an obsolete coastguard station in East Yorkshire into a cantilevered, three-storey home made of steel and glass to enhance their panoramic sea views. With a tight budget of £325,000 and a goal of finishing in 10 months, the pair had their son Yusef manage the project but when Yusef gets a career opportunity he can't turn down and Covid hits the couple's business, will they be able to stick to their budget and time frame?

In 2017, Leigh and Richard bought a derelict Cornish flour mill to restore and turn into their home. By 2021, rooms and landscaping were still unfinished. Kevin McCloud returns to see if this quirky old industrial building has finally become a home.

Furniture-maker Lucinda sets out to build a two-storey, highly insulated home entirely out of wood in the woodland near her old family home. She enlists the help of her children Dan and Rosie, who grew up learning her craft, to help her £150,000 budget stretch as far as possible.

Kevin McCloud returns to Gloucestershire to visit Jon and Noreen who, in 2013, planned to build a three-bed treehouse on a half-acre patch of woodland. Their stacked three box design was to be almost gravity-defying to avoid harming any tree roots and a mirror glass ground floor to reflect the surrounding trees but their £250,000 budget didn't seem to match the project's high ambition. Despite having worked hands-on for long hours with help from friends and family, by 2016 the house was barely ready enough for them to move in and the money had run out with the project not finished. Seven years later, Kevin returns to see their progress.

Kevin McCloud meets Rosa and her partner Craig who are turning a century-old, family-owned, decommissioned steam railway reservoir into a home. Their radical plan to reinvent the reservoir into a unique living space involves punching huge holes through the walls to allow light to flood in, a mezzanine with views across the valley and a concrete extension with four bedrooms. Along the way they encounter a pandemic, numerous money crises, pregnancy and a schedule that grows from 12 months to over three years, is it worth it for Rosa to have the reservoir home she has dreamt of since childhood?

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.

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 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 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 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.

Dan and Nina want to build a unique family home, but their plot is dominated by a pond filled with local drainage. Will their West Sussex house be sublime and sleek or a Shrek-like swamp?

Kevin McCloud meets architect Iain and his wife Jenny, who intend to build an enormous black minimalist house right in the middle of a 19th-century Scottish country estate. Their grand vision also involves connecting the new rectangular block to a dilapidated gardener's bothy - and the neighbours are watching.

Kevin McCloud visits a couple planning to build a home that looks like a work of art overlooking a valley in south Devon. Joe and Claire's new home will be a giant sculpture inspired by the local landscape, 70 metres long and featuring 34 enormous angled zinc shards jutting out in all directions. It will also be complicated to build and equally as expensive. And although Joe is wealthy, ambitious and fearless, his team quickly come up against problems and the budget virtually doubles the first walls go up. Is his dream home in danger of become a nightmare?

Kevin McCloud follows an ambitious build in Cornwall, as Leigh and Richard transform a derelict 17th century flour mill into a contemporary, three-bedroom home. They employ traditional craftsmen to start work on restoring the exterior, but it's not long before the true scale of the damage to the structure is revealed, and as the costs rise, they are forced to take more of the work themselves.

Nathan and Amye are building a cathedral-like home modeled on local Dutch barn houses with a sleek twist and a 5000-tile armadillo roof. But the pressure mounts for project manager Nathan.

Kevin McCloud follows more of Britain's most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams. In this first edition, Kevin meets former army captain Justin, who has spent £1.8million on an abandoned neo-Gothic cemetery keeper's lodge and adjoining ex-council toilet block in south-west London. Justin's vision is to restore the lodge but demolish the ugly toilet blocks and replace them with an enormous luxury ground-floor extension, with an added moat and a giant basement with a swimming pool - all just metres from the nearest grave.

Edward and Hazel plan a shining white art deco lighthouse on a rugged beautiful clifftop. But almost immediately their wildly optimistic plan runs into trouble.

In one of Grand Designs most disaster-laden projects, Edward and Hazel Short looked to build a vast lighthouse-inspired home in Croyde, on a crumbling clifftop the North Devon coastline. The grand plans for the build saw loans of £3 million taken out to fund the project, but with setbacks and delays, the money was soon gone, leaving the building half-finished. Edward estimated that it would take another £2 million to complete the build.

Richard and Felicia almost single-handedly turn an underground water reservoir in the Humber Estuary into a family home. It's an epic task. And then a life threatening illness strikes.

Kevin McCloud meets entrepreneur Paul Wilkinson and his wife Amy, who are building a giant new home on a 16-acre plot in Lincolnshire. The superstructure will be comprised of five circular buildings made up of interlocking timber cylinders, linked by raised wooden walkways that hang over a fishing lake. The complicated build proves difficult for Paul's local team, and their ambitious schedule of completing the project in a year soon looks out of reach.

Kevin McCloud returns to Devon to meet Kevin McCabe, a man who wanted to build one of the biggest houses the programme has ever seen. Finally, seven years after it began, the herculean task of building this giant cob castle is complete. Has it proven to be the great home he originally intended, and does it prove as he hoped that cob is a viable material for contemporary architecture?

Identical twins Nik and Jon Daughtry run a graphic design company together. They drive the same car and even own identical dogs. Now these two brothers are building two near identical houses next door to each other in Sheffield. Raised up on steel stilts on the site of an old corn mill, the houses pay tribute to Sheffield's industrial past. Huge steel frames with exposed blockwork and black steel cladding should create two sleek and modern family homes. But Nik and Jon's plan is incredibly ambitious. Not only do they want to build the two houses for the price of one, but the materials and finish have to be absolutely perfect. With a tight budget, it's an almighty stretch from the start. As delays, overages and imperfections hit, it's clear the twins' intuitive and incredibly close relationship will be tested like never before.

In the first 'healthy' home project ever seen on Grand Designs, gallery owner Elinor and fitness entrepreneur Born set themselves the near impossible task of creating Britain's first hypoallergenic house in a leafy back garden plot in south west London. Driven by the need to alleviate their two young sons' life-threatening allergies, their new part-submerged, shed-inspired home, will be constructed using low toxin materials and deploy cutting-edge filtration systems to clean the air they breathe. Right from the start, Born and Elinor are up against it, with access issues to their plot and the need to be super strict concerning suitable materials. It's an immense burden and with the children still suffering weekly allergy attacks, a race against time to get moved in. But will their innovative new house deliver the benefits Elinor and Born are hoping for?

Kevin McCloud returns for a new series of the show that follows intrepid individuals trying to design and build their dream home. In Buckinghamshire he meets young Spanish architect Jaime and his wife Mimi as they embark on an epic mission to convert a Grade II* listed folly into a family home. Originally designed to exhibit a fossil collection, but gutted by fire and left in ruins for the last 200 years, the crumbling mini castle beguiles Jaime and Mimi. Giving themselves a wildly optimistic six month deadline to finish before the birth of their second child, it's not long before the couple hit trouble. The Saxon burial ground the folly is built on throws up some macabre surprises. Their stonemasons from Madrid let them down and local builders with no restoration experience have to take on the crumbling stonework. Jaime puts all his energies and creativity into the project, using innovative 3D mapping to squeeze living spaces into the tower, but it's an exhausting struggle.

Joe and Lina's clever space-saving low-budget build may be the smallest two-bedroom house you're allowed to build in London, but it'll be stylish, and theirs - not a landlord's.

This is one of the most ambitious homes ever seen on Grand Designs - a scaly, curving house that's reminiscent of a giant coiled snake. Stephen Tetlow is head of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Stephen's wife Elizabeth is a committed horticulturalist. Together they want to build a home that reflects their passions - one that pushes Stephen's engineering skills to the limit and embraces Elizabeth's deep affinity with nature. Taking inspiration from an ammonite shell found on their land in the beautiful Blackdown Hills in Devon, the house spirals onto the landscape over two levels and mixes natural materials with cutting edge technology. Construction of such a complex curving structure proves a huge challenge and progress is tortuously slow.

Chris and Kayo build an intricate, radical and complicated home on protected land close to one of Britain's most historic abbeys.

Penny Talelli has a passion for cutting-edge contemporary architecture, while husband Mark Edwards loves period buildings. Somehow, these two neurologists want to build a family home that satisfies both their tastes. But will it be the best of both worlds or just an appalling mishmash? Taking the plunge, they buy a derelict Victorian gatehouse on a very steep hill in north London, that currently sits abandoned and unloved. The plan is to restore it, paint it white, and then add a giant black zinc-clad box at the back, marrying their love of old and new. But they run into problems. The gatehouse needs knocking down. Excavating the sloping site takes longer than expected. Increasingly struggling to balance their busy working lives with project managing the build, the future of Penny and Mark's unconventional home hangs in the balance.

Kevin McCloud returns one year later to see the progress of private chef Ed Versluys and Pilates instructor Vicky Anderson, who wanted to convert a concrete cowshed in the Somerset countryside into a three bedroom home. With the help of one young builder and the knowledge they can learn from the Internet, the couple planed to project manage the conversion themselves. However, they had only seven months and a budget of just over £200,000 to make a warm and comfortable home with straw bale walls and wide expanses of glass.

Kevin McCloud meets Mark and Candida Diacono, who have set about building a home in the shape of a plough on their 17-acre smallholding in Devon. With its complex curved roof, timber-clad exterior and steel-framed working barn, the ambitious project presents a unique technical challenge.

Paul Rimmer has worked with bricks for 40 years renovating Victorian houses in Bolton. But now he plans to hand-build a state-of-the-art wooden home. If his funding holds up that is.

Tom and Danielle Raffield's lifelong passion is steam-bending wood into extraordinary curvy shapes. They've spent much of their working lives using the technique to make furniture and lighting. Desperate to escape their tiny gamekeeper's lodge, they've decided to build a spectacular wavy wooden house in South Cornwall, with curvy cladding, twisty furniture, and interior walls covered with naturally-weathered timber. With only a £100k budget to play with, they decide to do a lot of the building themselves. But have they taken on too much?

A new run of shows starts with an overgrown, neglected half-acre site in the heart of a Gloucestershire town. It could be the perfect plot to build a house - if you were allowed to cut down its 27 protected trees and clear the site. But local plumber Jon Martin and ceramicist Noreen Jaafar have a much better solution. They love trees and they love their home town, so they're going to build a big modern tree house. The house will be way up in the trees, with stilts screwed into the earth and featuring balconies that see for miles. The only problem is building it, especially on a tight budget. It takes almost two years to crack the engineering as the project becomes an epic self-build, 40 feet up, as an exhausted Jon and Noreen battle towards the finish.

Kevin McCloud revisits Andy and Nicky Bruce who were building an experimental amphibious house on a small island on the Thames in Buckinghamshire. They spent £1.2 million on one of the most ambitious Grand Designs ever, but the logistical headache of building on an island only accessible by a narrow footbridge soon became clear. Heavy machinery was swept away by the river, contractors were changed, and the site was hit by severe storms, causing delays and resulting in an unfinished and untested building. Kevin returns to find out what living on a regularly flooded piece of land is like, and whether the floating home performed when the river burst its banks in January 2015.

Kevin McCloud follows the progress of private chef Ed Versluys and Pilates instructor Vicky Anderson, who want to convert a concrete cow-shed in the Somerset countryside into a three bedroom home. With the help of one young builder and the knowledge they can learn from the Internet, the couple plan to project manage the conversion themselves. However, they have only seven months and a budget of just over £200,000 to make a warm and comfortable home with straw bale walls and wide expanses of glass.

Kevin McCloud follows the progress of 37-year-old Angelo Mastropietro, as he transforms a damp, dark and abandoned cave in Worcestershire. Having recently been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Angelo wants to create a retreat to help him cope with the news and become a 21st century caveman. He has a budget of £100,000 and plans to almost single-handedly carve, cut and drill into the hillside to make the cave comfortable for contemporary living. However, there is no manual for a project of this kind, and the unique challenge soon becomes an obsession.

Boat enthusiast James Strangeways invites Kevin McCloud to survey progress on the construction of his new home, which his architect nephew Ben Hebblethwaite has designed to be as 'un-houselike' as possible. James has spent the past 35 years travelling the canals and waterways of Britain, and despite never liking houses, has decided now is the time to put down roots on dry land. Ben hoped a home standing on stilts above a marsh, and incorporating ship-like qualities such as a keel-shaped roof, will be enough to satisfy his boat-mad uncle. However, Ben's contractor goes into liquidation a few months into the project, taking £87,000 of the £300,000 budget, and when James decides to make a few tweaks to the design, alarm-bells begin to ring for the young architect.

Kevin McCloud looks at the challenges of self-building in the countryside, where design must embrace and enhance tradition, yet often overcome stringent planning constraints. Drawing on footage from the show's 15-year history, as well as new visits to extraordinary homes, he finds out how pioneers at the forefront of architecture are transforming agricultural and historic buildings, and bringing cutting-edge contemporary design to rural parts.

In the second of four special programmes, Kevin McCloud looks at the challenges of self-building in the UK's most remote places, where beautiful landscapes often meet savage weather. Drawing on footage from 15 years of the programme, as well as new visits to extraordinary and incredible homes, Kevin reveals which designs work best, and why. Along the way, he interviews pioneers at the forefront of architecture in the wilderness and sees the astonishing lengths people go to live on the edges of society.