Houses across Britain don't fit our needs...
- We are going to feel like sardines in a can. - ..or our dreams.
We really want to strip it out and start again.
I'm here Piers Taylor and I've hand-picked a team of experts
to transform everyday homes.
If you feel that, it doesn't feel like you'd think it would.
- From bold changes... - Your room, as it is, would disappear.
..to stunning interior ideas...
- This is beautiful. - ..and finishing touches.
It's a bit of a focal point.
Together, we will show you what's possible in any home...
- We thought it was beyond our wildest dreams. - ..and on any budget.
All of that is really just five scaffold boards.
We'll use every trick of the trade...
You want to give it a bit of a "wow" factor.
- ..to prove a limit on your funds... - This stuff is free.
- ..does not mean a limit on your imagination. - It's amazing.
This time, my challenge is to turn a former butcher
shop into a stunning interior with just 8K.
- I don't want anything really naff. - 'I push Lisa to mix the unusual...'
To have something that is really back.
'..with the off-the-shelf.'
They are really cheap.
'And Judy and Richard hate their outdated home.'
It is hideous.
'Will a dramatic mix of tricks make them change their minds?'
There is a bigger change that you could consider.
I'm not sure I'm totally convinced by all that.
In 2014, medical photographer Lisa bought this property in Matlock
for just over £200,000.
She desperately wants a family home, but in its current state,
it just doesn't work for her and 12-year-old son Max.
So, what did you have for lunch today?
They are struggling to live in the building, which is split into two.
There's a dilapidated lounge on one side
and a former butcher's shop on the other.
When I took it over, there was a big counter here,
there were big metal bars all around the ceiling where the meat hooks,
where they used to hang meat.
There's nothing that doesn't need doing in here.
The floor needs to come up
and it has had dead animals on it.
SHE LAUGHS
Lisa and Max don't have a kitchen,
so are struggling with a makeshift one at the back of the old shop.
The only thing, really, for me is not having a kitchen.
Which is a big thing, especially when you are a mum.
All mums need kitchens.
I think I was very optimistic buying this
because I didn't quite realise exactly how much work was involved.
I'm racing to Derbyshire with a challenge of turning the old
butcher's shop into a stunning home.
- Hi, Lisa. - Hi. - I'm Piers. - Nice to meet you. - Can I come in?
- Yes, come on through. - Thank you.
So, this is the kitchen area.
When you say kitchen, when you say kitchen, you mean YOUR kitchen?
It is MY kitchen and it's actually what the shop used to use to store
meat and wash their hands, and...
- So, this is, presumably, where you do your cooking. - Yes.
- And these look suspiciously like camping stoves. - Oh, yes, they are.
Yeah.
Fed up with the makeshift kitchen, Lisa is desperate for a proper
one and has increased her mortgage to pay for the building work.
I'd have, really, a maximum of 8,000 to spend in here,
but that would be for absolutely everything.
That would be all the building work and the kitchen itself.
This window is really beautiful. I'm kind of drawn through this way.
It's strange, though, that you are not using this space.
No, not using it at all, really.
Just to dump stuff in at the moment.
When you're in the kitchen area, it's almost as
if this is a completely separate area, I think, because of the wall.
If this wall wasn't here,
then you would be more inclined to just wander through.
I mean, this doesn't matter in a way.
It's clearly, you know, seen better days.
I mean, in a way, it shows that good space isn't about the decor -
it is about the qualities that exist in it.
- I think we should look at the rest of the plan. - Yes.
- Can you show me the other spaces? - Yeah, absolutely.
From the old shop, the long,
narrow corridor leads to the lounge on the other side.
This feels like a real rabbit warren
and then it opens out into this, which is amazing.
- You don't expect this. - It is a great space, isn't it?
You expect a funny little back parlour
and yet it is a big grand room.
Lisa wants a new kitchen,
but actually the whole ground floor needs a total overhaul.
I want to do everything, but actually Lisa only has £8,000.
The worry for me is that it sounds like an impossible challenge
but actually, if I'm really careful, it might just be possible.
I'm going to dive straight into the organisation of this.
This house would benefit enormously from having a big
opening into this room, and equivalently, the other side,
a big opening into your living room.
I do like open-plan.
'I think Lisa should create large doorways to open up
'the ground floor and then put a show-stopping kitchen
'island at the heart of it, right in front of the shop window.'
Have you thought about putting the kitchen down this end?
I gave thought to both ends,
but the end result of that was that it needed to go this end.
- See, I think it needs to go this end. - Oh, do you?
You could be preparing food right here, while friends were
dropping in, sitting in the window seat, all that sort of stuff.
You could live in the kitchen in a slightly more theatrical way
and get all of your kitchen contained in
one big kitchen cube.
Really? Never even considered that.
I didn't even know you could do that, really.
My plan could totally transform this property,
but Lisa is going to have to keep a tight rein on that 8K budget.
The critical thing is getting all of the trades to
happen at the right time
and I think money is so tight
that £1,000 spent in the wrong
place will blow this budget apart.
In January 2015, engineer Richard and HR manager Julie
moved from a town in Hampshire to the Shropshire countryside.
Having both suffered serious health problems,
they wanted a complete change in lifestyle.
Life is too short.
I just wanted to be close to my family so I could
see my nephews grow up, and I knew Richard would love it here, too.
As soon as we got out of the car and saw the location, it was just,
it was fabulous. It was like it was meant to be.
The location may be fabulous, but the house they bought isn't.
They paid just over £300,000 for a tired '60s house
set in the grounds of a grand hall.
Stunning building and then we have our bungalow.
You just look at it and you think, well,
there's so many things that need changing on it.
Like homes across the country, it's been extended without much thought
and is now a mishmash of styles.
It is hideous.
But the confusion at this house begins the moment you
arrive at the building.
This is the front of our house.
Front door, back door, so very confusing when people come in,
particularly when people come down the drive,
the door that they see is actually the back door, not the front door.
The front door leads into a rabbit warren of dark corridors.
The amazing views are hidden from many of the rooms.
This is our dining table.
It's in a rather dark part of the kitchen.
We'd like to have it in a position where we can look
out of the window from the table.
It's also covered in crap!
THEY LAUGH
Richard and Julie have £40,000
to try and turn this muddled dark house around.
We see this as our forever home and so we want to get it right.
We can't afford to get it wrong.
Helping transform these homes is my hand-picked team of architects,
each attempting to create extraordinary spaces
with ordinary budgets,
and taking on the enormous challenge of Julie and Richard's house
is Meredith Bowles.
Meredith needs to solve the biggest problems of layout
and circulation if this house is to work for the couple long-term.
Hi, you must be Meredith. I'm Julie, very pleased to meet you.
- This is Richard. - Hi, Richard.
First of all, I suppose we ought to start with this hallway.
We're stuck in this horrible dark, long, windy corridor
and, in fact, to get to the kitchen...
What's the other side of there?
This is an L-shaped kitchen-diner,
so we have to go through the lounge to get into the kitchen.
Well, corridors are generally wasted space.
If you could get rid of corridors, you're better off.
Take me to the view.
- Probably the best room in the house. - It is. So, things are picking up.
- Do those doors open up? - They do, but the steps are rotten.
OK, so here's the kitchen.
- It's really dark at that end of the kitchen, as you can see. - It is.
- This is what's known as miserable. - Yes!
We can't really have the table round as we'd like to,
to be to sit round, and I want to be able to have the whole family
to be able to sit all around together.
At the moment, you're not using the house, really,
because you're feeling like you haven't got the right kind of space.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Meredith has been responsible for some of the country's best
contemporary architecture,
but also has the rare talent of creating new homes out of old ones.
He utterly transformed this dated bungalow in Cambridgeshire,
outside...
and in,
but turning Richard and Julie's house around
will still be a massive challenge.
The original bungalow wasn't that great to start off with.
We've got a history of problems to try and put right.
What was that, I wonder?
I mean, I think you always start with the things that would make
the biggest practical difference to the way of living.
So, is it a comfortable house to live in?
Can people walk in and know where they're going?
When they get there, it feels like the right place to be?
The arrangement of space and quality of life,
that's the first thing to do, I think.
Meredith's first idea would remove one of the doors.
Given that you can't find the door,
is there a way that this should be or could be the front door?
Because if that's the case,
potentially we can get rid of a lot of internal corridor space.
What it will also do is allow the possibility of
not having to wait until we go round the corridor
and round the corner and into the room,
because you step through the door and you're there straightaway.
If that's all one room, you've got a huge window here.
Why didn't we think of that?
Meredith's big vision is to tackle the confusing layout
by having just one entrance.
Blocking up the existing front door
and making it a window means the internal walls of the corridor
can go to make a large, open-plan kitchen-diner.
Investing in two new sets of glass doors will improve the way
the house looks.
Light will flood into the heart of the building
and will finally make the most of the surrounding countryside.
When you see it with these square French doors downstairs,
it doesn't look so offensive.
It looks more balanced.
There's a lot to do on 40K here -
it could easily cost double that.
If they do pull off this bold plan,
it could completely change how they feel about their home.
- We fell in love the property because of where it is anyway. - Yeah.
If we could fall in love with the fabric of the building as well...
perfect.
Six weeks later, Julie and Richard start on Meredith's plan.
They've blocked up the old front door and are installing new windows.
Any significant work we do to our homes must be approved
and signed off by building control.
It's just great be able to actually see some work taking shape now.
The couple are replacing more windows and doors
than Meredith suggested.
It's costing them £14,000,
which is more than a quarter of their total budget.
For Rich and I, we both feel really strongly that they should
match in terms of shape.
They should be in proportion to each other,
so that's why we are spending money
to replace the windows that are rotten but also the ones...
a couple of the windows that were actually in pretty good nick.
Before they can refit and redecorate,
they need to knock some walls down.
Richard is doing as much of the work as he can to save money
and starts by taking down the kitchen ceiling.
The joists are running that way and I was hoping they'd run that way,
which would have been easier.
Unpicking a house is always a risky business as there's no
telling what you'll find.
Any nasty discovery could end up costing Richard and Julie thousands.
Richard's saving money by doing it himself,
but Lisa's taking a different approach.
She's hired local builder Rocky.
He's quoted just over £6,000 to do the building work,
leaving just 2K for the new kitchen.
Ah. Looking cleaner now.
It feels a lot bigger.
It feels better already, actually.
Next, the builders remove interiors walls to open up the ground floor...
..and fit two steel beams to support the ceiling.
Whereas we were going with one steel initially,
the engineer has picked up that we need two steels.
That's it. Now they can go up.
This will cost an additional £450,
but Lisa's already losing track of the finances.
I'm not particularly good at maths,
so I've avoided adding things up, to be honest.
Yeah.
Unless Lisa keeps control of the costs,
she could spend all her money before she gets to the interior fit-out,
leaving her without a kitchen at all.
In Shropshire, Richard and Julie are embracing Meredith's
radical plan to improve their confusing, dark home.
Today, Richard is taking down an old low ceiling
with help from Julie's dad Malcolm.
Yeah, I know. I just want to see what's here.
I mean, that's part of the problem we had with the room anyway, was
the low ceiling, and the bit where Meredith found it really gloomy.
If you are able to increase the ceiling height in a room,
it will make a space feel bigger and brighter.
A simpler way to tackle dark areas is to invest in good lighting.
Richard and Malcolm are unpicking
a house which has been chopped and changed for years.
It seems like the same stuff. This is very compressed.
Is that chipboard?
They've uncovered an old roof buried in the ceiling.
The house is more of a bodge than they'd feared.
Whose idea was this?
I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end
but, in the meantime, it's bloody hard work.
I'm fairly knackered.
I'm doing seven days a week, I'm doing ten hours at least a day,
I have been for months.
I think some days it gets to him how much work he's still to do.
I certainly don't want Richard to
get into such a stress over it that he's affecting his health.
You know it's going to be bad for a while,
but the bad time is going on and on.
I fear that, with these setbacks, Richard and Julie have
totally lost faith in their home.
Meredith and I need to come up with a plan.
In a way, this house is typical of many houses built in the 1960s.
It's been extended over the years and no-one has ever really
considered it as a piece of architecture or as a complete
building, even, have they?
It's ended up being a mishmash of things that has never really
hung together - it's true.
It looks like a building that no-one has ever really loved, as well.
That's the biggest problem, I think.
I think Richard and Julie don't love it either.
The challenge is to get them to see there's something
good about the 1960s that they can get excited about.
The mid-20th century was a radical era for architecture.
Houses were often oblong-shaped with plain walls clad in concrete
tiles or vertical timbers.
It will be interesting to see what Richard and Julie make of this
house, which, like theirs, started life as something fairly ordinary.
And what they've done is not huge but it's transformed the house.
OK, so this is the house I wanted to bring you to.
I thought our house was ugly when it was first built,
but the original building here is probably even worse...if anything.
Come on in.
Wow, look at all the colour.
Originally built in 1967,
this house has recently been extended and remodelled.
It's now flooded with light,
making it feel larger with views extending beyond the rooms.
But that is beautiful. I love that.
Making Julie and Richard's new living areas feel connected
is critical to their success.
Meredith wants them to consider using one material throughout.
There's something to me about the consistency of this,
having so much of the timber, which is really appealing.
So rather than thinking of the living room
and the dining room as two separate spaces,
I think it would end up feeling much bigger
if you managed to unite the two.
There would be ways in which you could get the quality
of these expensive finishes
without rebuilding your house out of solid Douglas fir.
Cheaper alternatives to Douglas fir are widely available,
like Scandinavian Redwood,
but any wood you do use
must be coated to restrict the spread of fire.
As an interior finish, wood is a great way you can bring pattern
and texture into a room as an alternative to wallpaper.
It also saves on the cost of plastering.
I love the patterning through this particular wood.
I think this is really nice.
This has already given me an idea for what we could do in the kitchen.
The architects, Maccreanor Lavington, have also punched
a hole into the room next door -
a simple design trick you can do to link rooms in a house.
This part of the wall has been removed, which allows you not only
to see onto the next room, but you see right out into the street,
so you get borrowed light and view.
I think it's great.
We talked about putting some glass bricks in to borrow the light
through from the lounge,
but actually I like the fact you've got the view way beyond.
These standard flat pack units have been given a '60s feel
with a striking citrus colour and sourcing different handles.
You can do this by spraying or hand-painting basic white units.
Vintage furniture doesn't crowd the living room
and adds to the period feel.
You can find originals in antique shops,
or good reproductions are available on the high street.
So when we first got out of the car
and saw a row of '60s terraced properties, I think
we wondered what on earth we were going to be shown inside.
But actually this one, as '60s go, I think is quite attractive.
There's so many good ideas
I'd like to incorporate in our house if we can.
In Derbyshire, most of the structural work is complete but
Lisa is having second thoughts about where the kitchen island should go.
The design for the kitchen is still up in the air,
so I've got to try and make some decisions over the next day or so.
Well, today or tomorrow.
Well, if we don't get the information in time then, yeah,
definitely, it will delay the build.
I think Lisa is struggling
to see how the kitchen will work in the space,
so I've arranged to take her to a mill in Bath that's now a home.
I think the kitchen really needs to be more than something that's just
tucked away in a corner of the room, and I want to show her and Max
a kitchen that is the dominant feature of a space.
Wow. Well, this is amazing, isn't it?
This relationship between the kitchen
and the living space is what you'll have at your place.
I think we should go down and have a look.
This dramatic open-plan room has been created from
an old cow barn on the side of the main building.
Feels completely different when you're down the stairs, doesn't it?
- Yes. - Wow, look at the view, Max.
You can see here how important it is to have a kitchen island
that actually faces the room.
Cooking is a social activity, isn't it?
And this sort of shows that the dialogue you have here with that
table is really important because this will be as it is for you.
Yes. Yeah. Apart from we've not got that beautiful view, of course.
But you've got a great view out onto a street,
which I think is beautiful.
And there's also just this very finished,
polished kitchen in what was quite a rough space.
The reason I wanted to show you this house is that there's
such a range of different textures and materials.
There's timber. This is plywood with steel on top.
There's this spray-painted MDF.
The lesson here is that you don't have to follow
the rules of the usual kitchen showrooms.
Threefold Architects have combined a bright designer Italian kitchen
with a basic, poured concrete floor and rustic, unfinished walls.
Stainless steel is an expensive option for a worktop.
A trick for more modest budgets is to avoid the obvious.
And also the thing I'm really interested in is whether you have
something that is the standard thickness, which this is, or -
and I really want to persuade you to do this -
to have something that is really thick.
Something that thick.
That is 80mm, so that's twice as thick as a normal worktop.
Then actually having timber or something else in something
that was chunky and something that spoke of the history
of the butcher's shop, with a reference to a butcher's block.
- That could be really good, couldn't it? - Yeah, I definitely like chunky.
Yeah.
You really don't have to do what everyone else does when
creating a kitchen and I want Lisa to be really brave with her choices.
I've got quite a few ideas from it, particularly
the layout of things, the colour of things, using different textures.
I think the really exciting thing is encouraging you to be really
bold in that space and do something that's incredibly bright,
and not do something that's beige, and, you know, actually celebrate
the fact that it's a non-domestic space, or was a non-domestic space,
it was a butcher's shop,
and do something that's colourful and beautiful.
In Shropshire, Richard and Julie have opened up the ground floor
and can now get on with the interior fit-out.
Despite tackling most of the work themselves, they're already
forecasting an overspend on their £40,000 budget.
I am worried about the budget and
I'm sure I haven't got everything listed in my spreadsheet yet.
They now must fit out the interior as cheaply as possible.
Julie and Richard need a massive 80m of flooring.
Meredith is on a mission to find a cheap solution
which adds some quality to their bodged-up home.
He's brought them to a derelict school
and has a radical strategy for finding some high quality materials.
- Is this looking promising for you? - It's looking very exciting.
Amazing, yeah. I didn't expect this at all.
It's looking a bit crabby from outside
but there's some exciting stuff inside.
How are you doing at the moment on unifying that space we
talked about last time?
I think the issue we've got now is budget for the flooring because...
What are you looking at using at the moment?
We wanted to use some kind of...probably wood effect.
- No! Wood effect?! Eurgh! - Stick down vinyl flooring. - How much?
But that would be thousands anyway because of the amount of space
we're looking at, and we just don't have that money now...
So it's thousands of pounds for wood effect.
Demolition sites are exciting because you're seeing,
like a magpie, what you can take out of a place.
This is all going to be skipped basically
and, inside there, there's some fantastic material that
I'm sure we can find use for in Richard and Julie's house.
Most demolition sites aren't open to the public,
so another way you can find salvaged materials is to look out
for local houses being refurbished.
Ooh. How about this for kitchen doors then?
The handles are pretty cute, don't you think?
- They're not bad, are they? - Wow, look at this. - Oh, wow.
- Remember your old school hall? - I do. I do. Crikey. - Nice floor.
- It's like a proper dance floor, isn't it? - Yeah.
HE HUMS A TUNE
Didn't know we could dance.
- You're a dab hand at that, aren't you? - We met dancing.
- Haven't done it for a few years. - Oh, my goodness.
I've never done it in safety shoes.
- You definitely need to this floor in your house. - We do need this floor.
- Perfect. - Is this similar to the fake one you're thinking of having?
- It's better cos it's real. - So this is pretty solid stuff.
These are all tongue and groove,
so I think they'll be able to go back down pretty well.
The wood looks great but how
on earth would we get all that stuff off the back?
We wouldn't lay it like that, would we?
Obviously, this old bitumen, that needs to come off.
There's a bit of work to clean them up but, you know, this stuff's free.
Parquet flooring is hard wearing and low-maintenance.
Bought new, it starts at around £40 per square metre
and would cost Julie and Richard over £3,000.
Had you thought about how you might lay it?
This is obviously in a chevron pattern.
I must admit, I do like that.
This is the most complicated way of laying it, I suppose.
- OK. - Yeah. - So that'll take a bit of time, then.
You could do other, simpler ones.
There's one that we've used before, which is making it much
easier where you're just using the same pieces like that,
and it means that, if you go slightly wrong, it doesn't matter
if they don't quite align.
- That sounds good. - I always refer to that as a train track pattern.
You know, if they can get these materials,
then they'll make such a big impact, it's going to transform the house.
This vintage parquet is a staggeringly good find,
but they'll need to put in time and effort to clean it up.
We can save money by using these new materials that are salvaged,
but then there's more work to get them ready for us to use.
We've got so many things we are doing, we haven't got the money
to pay anyone to do it, so it's just a matter of slogging along with it.
They go ahead and salvage the parquet flooring.
I've got to get it unloaded at the other end.
Richard begins hand cleaning the old bitumen from the tiles.
It's a great cost saving move but is a monumental task.
When I first started doing these, I could do 20 in an hour,
so I cut down on the amount of cleaning I did
and managed to get it up to 40 in an hour.
Richard is a real perfectionist.
He wants to be able to do things in his own time and his own way,
and do it right, and, to be honest,
although sometimes it's frustrating that things take longer than
I might imagine they're going to take, at the end of the day,
you know, there's a good finish. It's worth it.
It's definitely worth it. He does a good job.
I could probably not bother with this edge
but I like doing things thoroughly, so...
To be honest, I wouldn't have done it.
There's no way I would have wanted to spend all that time doing it.
Back in Derbyshire, the builders are fitting Lisa's new kitchen units.
She's spent £1,200 on them.
Her £8,000 pot is now all spent
and she's forced to dip into life savings.
It's a classic problem - running out of money when it matters most.
We have to start thinking outside of the box because the budget has gone,
so anything over and above that is not good really,
so everything's got to be finished off as cheaply as possible now.
Lisa has decided to stick with my original plan for the kitchen
but, at the moment, it's a blank, white canvas and risks being bland.
It's essential she doesn't choose the cheapest, bog-standard
finishes just to get it done.
I don't want anything really naff.
Obviously, spending all this money and then having a naff kitchen...
Lisa's only has a tiny amount of money left to finish her project,
but just because she's got a very small amount of money left
doesn't mean she needs to limit her ambition in terms of what
this new kitchen is going to feel like.
There's an awful lot she can do with very little.
I'm back with some low-cost design tricks that could make the interior
amazing, but only if she's willing to think differently about finishes.
- Hi, Lisa. How are you doing? - Hi. All right. You? - Good to see you.
Look at this. Wow. And you've got the kitchen in as well.
I mean, this looks amazing.
It's very light, isn't it?
But now some of the character is in danger of going.
- Do you know what I mean? - Yes.
It feels as if this could be any number of sort of refurbs.
I think coming in and seeing something amazing on that wall,
which has some of the drama of the old shop, could be amazing.
It may seem crazy to add back in some tiles,
but what about adding back in an enormous wall of tiles above that?
Tiles would be good because the oven's there,
so that would protect the wall.
Specifically, what about black and white tiles?
- Mm, good. - OK, good.
- Lisa, I've brought a few packs of tiles. - Oh, I like those.
- I do, too. - Yeah.
They actually look like the sort of tiles that would have been here.
- Yes. - There's lots of ways you can arrange these.
'These are from a DIY store and a bargain at just 36p each.
'I love simple black and white tiles
'because they suit period and modern homes.
'They're versatile and a cheap way you can bring a smart,
'classic feel to hallways, bathrooms or kitchens.'
I mean, I really like them like this and you can see how different
it is if you do something that is stretcher bonded, which is that.
By stretcher bonded, it's like a brick wall, basically,
and then you would go back to that.
But there's a sort of simplicity to this,
which is really clean and sort of refreshing, isn't it?
It's a pretty cost-effective way of doing something amazing, I think.
And, of course, they're practical
because this is where your cooker is.
'Following on from our trip to the old mill, I'd like to
'show Lisa how she could inject colour into her new kitchen.'
So, looking at this now, there are lots of places you could add colour.
I mean, what colours do you like?
I'd start probably by choosing warmer colours.
- That's quite a warm colour, isn't it? - Yeah.
And that is a very nice warm colour.
Actually, I think that is a very warm colour.
I mean, it's quite theatrical.
'Many people worry about using strong colours but don't be scared -
'it's a great way to add character and drama to a room.
'The trick is to add accents of colour where they'll make
'the biggest difference.'
The new opening, these doors need...
I'm kind of thinking a sort of aubergine colour -
something sort of deep and rich.
I think dark colours can suck the light out of rooms,
but this is so bright now,
and there's also something about acknowledging the Victorian aspect
of this and, in a way, these dark colours are quite sort of Victorian.
I think doing this on those doors
and the architrave could look amazing.
I think that the inside of the lights, you could have some
fun with and spray them yellow or something.
'Painting the inside of lights with a bright yellow is another
'really useful design trick.
'It gives a warm glow and helps brighten a room
'even on the dullest days.'
Paint those as blocks of colour.
'Colour could also be used to make an eye-popping
'feature of the kitchen island.'
What if that was an amazing colour, that side and this side?
- I can't really imagine it. - You look shocked. - Yeah. - It's pretty bold.
- Is it going to look really naff or cheap? - Red is a universal colour.
It doesn't date, it doesn't age, anything goes with it,
but the brilliance of it in here would just be amazing.
Lisa's yet to be convinced, so I want her to see first-hand
how colour could make a big difference to her home.
As you can see, I've brought you somewhere really glamorous.
A car body shop might be an unlikely place to be experimenting
with home furnishings, but the guys here are experts at spray painting.
'I want to use their skills to create colourful fixtures
'and fittings for Lisa's kitchen.
'You can find places like this in every town and city.'
What we'd like to get is something really bright and glossy.
Yeah? What sort of colour are you after?
I think, for this, we'd like to look at tomato red, something
very bright. And for the inside of the light, maybe a bright yellow.
For the red, something like a motorcycle colour?
- These are motorbike colours, are they? - Ducati red that is.
- So, that's pretty nice, isn't it? - Mm.
- It's bright. - Very bright. It's beautiful, actually, that, isn't it?
'After prepping, the surfaces
'are sprayed with commercial vehicle paint.
'It creates a resilient and hard-wearing finish.'
The moment of reckoning.
It's going on now.
'Any paint you use must be fit for purpose.
'It's worth checking the label or with the manufacturers.'
It's really lustrous.
- What do you reckon? - I love it.
I think the red will look great with the black and white actually.
'Here, they charge £42 per hour for spray painting.
'The trick is to get multiple items sprayed in one go to make it
'more cost-effective.'
I think it looks amazing, that. It's also so unexpected inside a light.
- Yeah. - It's getting a little bit of colour that'll have a big effect.
Wow.
- I love that colour. - And it's a beautiful finish as well, isn't it?
With the light on it. It's amazing, that, isn't it?
So, the red is great but I think the lights are beautiful.
- I'm amazed by that. - Wow. - Imagine that with a light in it.
And somehow keeping the outside black...
I mean, the sort of contrast between the black outside
and the yellow inside is really amazing, isn't it?
- Yeah. I love it. Yeah, definitely. - Good.
It's great Lisa likes the test we've done,
but it's up to her to take the idea forward.
In Shropshire, Richard and Julie's kitchen units have been fitted
and they've invested £1,700 in a granite worktop.
They've started decorating but, like many of us, they're doing the
bog-standard thing - pale colours on the walls and a white ceiling.
While I'm encouraging Lisa to think about small accents of colour,
Meredith's been hard at work on a bigger scheme for
Richard and Julie's walls.
- Hello again. - Hello.
But will they be brave enough to go for it?
So you recognise the place, then?
The first thing he wants them to do is paint the base of the
kitchen island a strong, dark colour to enhance the expensive granite.
Shall we have a look at one of the cupboard doors?
This is one of the doors.
Would it be better if it was a darker colour?
This will look slightly different against it.
I don't know whether we've got anything...
Well, my bag is a reddy colour.
- You know, suddenly, I think... - Looks totally different.
This has a very different quality against that
than it does against this.
This is picking up the kind of whites in it.
This, suddenly, the grey has become richer.
This will suddenly really sing.
I must admit, that's a very dark colour,
which I'm a little bit surprised by.
We'd never have thought of that,
but I actually think it makes it stand up
- and say, "Look at me." - Yeah.
And this is the crowning glory of the kitchen, so...
It totally is.
But Meredith has a bigger change he wants them to consider
that goes against what we all do when painting a room.
You can see the whole thing in situ.
He wants them to repaint the walls white to disguise the cheap
white units and then put the colour on the ceiling instead.
That looks a bit brighter, doesn't it?
By having the colour around the kitchen,
it's making those cabinets a centrepiece on that wall.
What I was thinking is, if you make the wall sort of disappear,
you're not interested in the walls, they are just white
and the cupboards are white, and they all sort of go together
and you've got this fantastic thing
full of the richness in the middle of the room,
you've got a really beautiful floor with a lot of lustre
and warmth to it, and you have a contrasting
ceiling in a complementary colour, which is the colour that you
love, which... This ceiling is now really high enough to take that
and that is going to be more unusual.
And the reason to do that is to make everything feel a bit bigger
and then have the surprising sandwich of colours
of the ceiling and the floor.
I think that would work well.
Yeah... I'm not sure I'm totally convinced by all that.
We could end up with a sea of white, couldn't we?
It would be really flat.
You won't be without that sense of colour.
You would experience it in a different way.
It could be stronger, a bit punchier...
..and make this really work more for you, having invested in this.
Exhausted after months of hard work, is Meredith's bold colour scheme
just too much for them at this late stage?
In Derbyshire, it's the last push to finish Lisa's new kitchen.
She's learning the lesson about accents of colour
and has decided to paint the double doors.
I wasn't sure how to introduce colour into the room.
You sort of think that you need to introduce colour into the walls
when, actually, you don't.
You can just use colour with accessories.
- What do you think to the purple, Max? - I like purple.
- It's one of my favourite colours. - Is it? - Yeah.
Lisa has returned to the car body shop with some more low-cost
light fittings for spray painting.
- Can I leave that with you? - Yeah. - Yeah.
- I'll get them ready for you for tomorrow. - Oh, great.
- Thank you very much. Bye. - See you soon.
I've shown Lisa lots of design ideas for this build,
from colour to tiles to worktops.
Together they could give her a stunning kitchen,
a far cry from the derelict butcher's shop.
But has she pulled it off?
Oh, wow.
Three and a half months after my first visit,
I'm back in Derbyshire.
I've tried to give Lisa a vision and guide her at key
points of this project, but it's always been a struggle with
such a small budget converting this butcher's shop into her home.
Previously, the ground floor had the old shop on one side
and a lounge on the other.
It was divided and disconnected.
The makeshift kitchen was a nightmare
and there was nowhere for Lisa and Max to eat together.
I know Lisa ran out of money a while ago, so how far has she got?
- Hi, Lisa. - Hi. - How are you doing? - Come in.
- Look at this. - Yeah. - Wow.
'Lisa went for my idea of big openings to link the ground floor.'
Are you glad now that you've made these openings?
Oh, yeah. I love it. Absolutely love it. It works really well,
especially when you've got both sets of doors open.
It's almost like an open-plan feel.
That purple is working really, really well.
I'm dying to open them and see what's beyond. Can I do that?
Yes, absolutely.
This is fantastic. This is amazing. Really amazing.
I almost can't believe it.
To think this was two dingy rooms
and now it feels like the most amazing kitchen.
It's better than just a kitchen because it really celebrates
the fact that this did used to be a big butcher's shop.
Lisa's put the new kitchen island at the front of the old shop,
creating a fantastic space to cook and prepare food.
I think what's great is that this island,
which probably seems, again, a bit of an indulgence,
having something that took up so much space, really makes sense now.
Yes. And the thick worktop and the lights and the tiles, it's all...
- Yeah. - ..just like a butcher's shop, really. - Absolutely.
Lisa took my advice and went for a really chunky worktop.
She bought beech ones from an online auction.
Then her builder just doubled them up to create an 80mm thick one.
Just taking standard worktops and doubling them up,
and then cutting the edges square, really is so much more effective
than a very expensive bit of granite or marble,
or even stainless steel or something.
What I like about it is that these
are ordinary things that anybody could do.
These aren't super high-end, expensive things.
The tiles are so dramatic.
Coming in and seeing them,
it's amazing what you can do with 120 very standard tiles, isn't it?
The checkerboard arrangement of tiles adds character to the room
and cheaply, too.
This whole wall of tiles cost just £52.
And then these lights, which you've had sprayed up the yellow again.
The lights were sourced online
and then spray painted at the car body shop.
They cost less than £40 each.
As well as thinking about how lights look in a room,
it's important to consider where you place them.
These lights work really well because there's just two
groups of four where you need them, which is over these two key areas.
I think it's interesting with all this white,
and the brightness of that afternoon light coming in, that actually
it could have felt quite stark without a bit of colour,
but the lights do give a really warm glow,
don't they, with that yellow inside?
In the evening and night, it is a very warm light.
Very... It gives a very homely feel.
There really was something abandoned about this space, I think,
when you bought this house. How does it feel to be in here now?
I'm still enjoying that newness of it and the space is amazing.
Lisa's been brave enough to go for lots of low-cost design
ideas for this kitchen, except one.
I think it's just like the drawing.
I mean, the only thing that isn't like the drawing is
- the cupboards aren't... - Red. - They aren't red.
But they could be at some future dates, couldn't they?
In future, yeah.
I also really want to go and sit down at the table
because this is where it all started.
Lisa's whole reason for taking on this project was to have
a family kitchen she and Max could finally eat together in.
How does Max feel about this space?
Oh, he loves it. He really loves it.
As soon as the worktop went on, he wanted to do some baking.
Lisa, initially, you had a budget of about £8,000
to make a new kitchen here.
How much have you ended up spending?
- It's definitely over budget. - How much over do you think?
Probably at least 2,000.
So...about £10,000.
I think you've done an amazing amount for the money.
- A lot of people would spend £10,000 on a kitchen. - That's right, yeah.
- It's the whole thing. The whole thing. - The whole thing.
The kitchen and opened-up ground floor have transformed this
property from a disused shop and an unloved living room
into a fresh, contemporary home.
I think what Lisa has done here is to show that design is really
affordable and really accessible.
It isn't something out of the reach of ordinary people
and everybody could end up with a kitchen as good as Lisa's.
In Shropshire, Richard is starting to lay the reclaimed parquet floor.
Having hand-cleaned all the blocks,
his next challenge is to fit them.
Right, let's get this open.
Hm.
If anyone's got any advice, feel free to chip in.
Richard's using a special parquet flooring adhesive to glue
the pieces in place, but he's never attempted anything like this before.
Right, here goes nothing!
Scary stuff, this.
Now, then...
The couple are going for the straight train-track pattern
suggested by Meredith.
It's a race against time to get them in the correct position.
This stuff's meant to dry in about 20 minutes,
so you want to make sure you put it in the right place.
Richard's laying the floor from the centre of the room
and then working outwards.
I marked this out last night and made sure it's going
straight across the room rather than... Like you say, if you start
in the corner, you'll probably end up with it looking a bit funny.
It's all a bit of a toss up cos you'll have parts of it
that are going to be awkward anyway, whatever way you do it, I think.
Richard and Julie have worked tirelessly for months to get
Meredith's vision, but will all the effort be worth it?
Nine tiles down so far.
Only another, what, 1,500, 1,600 to go?
Yeah, 1,600 for this room.
Seven months since his first visit,
Meredith is back to see if they've managed to transform the dark
and confusing home into a light-filled and well-ordered one.
Well, I'm really intrigued to see the quality of the interior.
I mean, when it's a building site, you get a good idea
but it's not until it's finally painted
and finished that you really get a sense of what it's like to live in.
Before, the house had mismatched windows, a disastrous layout
and two confusing entrances.
Has Meredith's plan changed all that?
- Look at this! - What do you think? - Look at this. It's fantastic.
Isn't it great?
You walk down the driveway and it's just in front of you.
There's no confusion at all. It's the way in.
And, of course, with my new kitchen window,
I can see when people come to the door.
- Yeah. - You think, "Ah, we have a visitor."
Right, let's go inside, out of the cold.
Previously, the kitchen was impractical and gloomy.
The dining area, with its low ceiling, was the darkest part.
Meredith encouraged them to knock through into the corridor,
improving the layout and creating a new, larger kitchen-diner.
So, what's the result?
- Oh, wow. Look at this. - What do you think?
That is fantastic.
The light and space, it's so different. It seems huge.
Especially from the last time you were here and the walls were dark.
- Yeah, so... - You remember that. - I do remember that. I do remember that.
So, the space here is fantastic, isn't it?
And these new windows give...
It opens the whole lot out.
Julie and Richard at last have a dining area where they can eat
and enjoy those amazing views.
I mean, instead of being in a corner
and away from the reason you bought the place in the first instance,
now the place where you're able to sit and enjoy
is between the garden and the cooking,
instead of being tucked away in that miserable corner over there.
- We don't miss the dark, gloomy corner there. - No.
What a nice place to be able to have dinner.
The white table and transparent chairs, which cost just £65 each,
help add to the feeling of space.
So, who bagsed the best view?
Well, that's me, obviously. It's a cook's prerogative.
But there are no bad seats in this table cos you get the views
- all through the different windows and the mirrors. - It's true.
- And you've done the floor. - Yeah. - Look at that.
Was that...? That must have been hard, Richard.
There was a lot of effort, time - most of it cleaning them.
Richard spent 40 hours cleaning the bitumen off the bottom of the tiles.
- That's a lot of work. - Yes. - But what do you think of the effect?
- Absolutely worth it. - Chuffed with that. - We love it.
But the main thing, isn't it, that it just adds to a kind
of layer of history, of weight, of authenticity, of real materials?
It's lovely the way these different colours come up in it.
- I think it looks beautiful. - Great, yeah.
The only costs?
For transportation and adhesive, just £300.
- It's a priceless floor for £300. - Exactly.
Despite initial reservations, Richard and Julie have
been brave enough to go with Meredith's colour scheme.
So I love the combination of the colour of the floor
against the colour of the ceiling.
I think that was a really good choice,
the kind of greeny, grey colour.
I love the greeny, blue colour,
but when you said about putting it on the ceiling...
But it works so well.
And I love the freshness, the brightness of the white walls.
You know, now these cabinets just sort of disappear in with that.
I think, to me, that feels really spacious, bright.
And you have a kind of sandwich between the warmth of the floor
and the depth of the colour in the ceiling.
A bit like sitting under the canopy of a tree, where the vista is the
space and there's something that's sort of protective above your head.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
The colours are tied together with a painting created by Richard's
daughter, blown up into a stunning piece of wall art.
I love the scale and the size of this, which is now, you know,
it's the size of the wall.
It's a real impact when you come in the room.
Printed by a company they found online, it cost £100 and came with
an adhesive backing so they could stick it straight onto the wall.
And the contrast is why it works colour-wise, as well, isn't it?
So, you know, picking up the reds and yellows which come from the
floor and then the greens and the blues which come from the ceiling.
- And this contrasting base works really well. - Yeah.
Gives it a weight in the centre of the room,
which is what I was hoping it would do.
We'd have never had the courage to put a colour that dark on anything
and, when you explained how it makes the worktop shine,
then we just decided to go for it and we love it.
We do love it.
Meredith's solved the fundamental problem of layout
and circulation in this house.
So you used to come in from over there, didn't you?
So now this connection between the two, it's so completely different.
So now it's just a sense of the whole thing being one space.
But it's still got a cosy corner, which I really wanted for a lounge.
Yeah.
Inspired by their trip to the '60s house,
the couple have punched a hole between the living room and kitchen
and, in a cost-saving move, even recycled parts of the old house.
- That's a double glazing unit taken out of the old windows. - Brilliant.
- A bit of up-cycling there. - Re-used. Yeah.
And this space is now just much more generously proportioned, isn't it?
It does, it feels more generous.
You've got the added bonus that, if someone comes to the front door,
you can just stand up from over there and see who it is.
Previously, the exterior was tired and mismatched.
Richard and Julie hated how their house looked
compared to the grand hall next door.
Let's just walk down and see how the house looks against the hall.
It's been a lot of work but it just looks a million times better.
It's no longer embarrassing next to the hall.
So it was expensive, wasn't it?
The amount of money you put in to change all the windows.
It's not 100% symmetry across the back of the house
but it's balanced now.
So this transformation has been a huge amount of work.
It seems that Richard has done an awful lot of that.
I'm so proud of him. He has just put in so many hours.
I think he has had one day off,
where he hasn't been working on the house,
in all the months we've been working on it.
He's done a fantastic job and he knows how proud I am of him.
Their commitment to this project has been extraordinary,
but how has their 40k budget fared?
So, after all of that effort,
and you've got to this point,
how much has it actually cost you?
Well, we had 40,000 set aside for renovating the house,
we've actually gone a bit over, so we're about 41, just over 41.
So, a tiny overspend.
There is a transformation.
It's not remotely the same house that I came to visit last year.
You know, it's open, it airy, isn't it? It feels generous.
We always loved where the house was and we saw the potential,
but we certainly didn't love it the way it was.
- We feel really proud of it now. - You should be.
It's given it a completely different quality.
Next time, there's a radical rethink on shared living.
I hadn't expected it to be that separate.
But is it a step they're willing to take?
The door was open for some change. That door is gradually closing.
And how to double your floor space...
It looks amazing.
..without extending...
You could actually take out the ceiling and get a sleeping platform.
..with a budget and deadline that can't be moved.
We HAVE to come back and it HAS to be liveable.