To celebrate season 12 of Grand Designs coming to DVD next month, we have a fantastic prize up for grabs for fellow Kevin McCloud fans worth more than $300! Would you like to binge watch seasons 1 to 12? Well, here’s your chance!
The UK’s most popular property show returns with its 12th series, following intrepid home builders as they pursue their architectural dreams. Kevin guides us through the trials and tribulations of those obsessively trying to create a unique place to live, often over many months, even years. This series features a dramatic modernist villa perched atop a crumbling cliff in Snowdonia, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired bachelor pad made out of four shipping containers in the Northern Irish countryside and the UK’s first amphibious house on a floodplain of the Thames in Buckinghamshire.
In addition, Kevin revisits some of the series’ previous builds to see what changes have been made and discover whether the reality has lived up to the dream.
You could win series 12 and every other previous series on DVD. To be in with a chance, complete the form below by 5pm Sydney time on Thursday 16 July 2015.
House Rules judge and Reno Addict resident expert, architect Joe Snell
Hoorah for another home show about to start! I have to admit I only got into House Rules at the end of the last series. I’d decided I just didn’t have enough TV time left to watch it as well as The Block, and Grand Designs and Selling Houses Australia… and all the others!
But I actually really love the concept and think it’s a fresh take on the reality renovation genre. I mean, what better prize in this day and age than having your mortgage paid off?! And I love the emotions involved because the contestants own homes are the ones being made over. It adds a whole extra element to reveal time!
House Rules judge and Reno Addict resident expert, architect Joe Snell. Photo by Jacqui Turk
[contextly_sidebar id=”dYJg2Wj3UkrijqRFzB4tyMIlWTuQssGE”]I’m also a big fan of host Johanna Griggs. she’s just so down to earth and real! I think I’d like to have a coffee and a chat with Joh! And then there’s architect Joe Snell, one of the resident experts on our sister site, Reno Addict. He is so super passionate about good design, it’s contagious, and it’s great to see his TV career taking off.
Hope you enjoy the series preview video above.
We look forward to bringing you more about the Channel 7 show, due to start again soon, in the coming weeks.
Are you a House Rules fan? Which is your favourite reality TV show?
Grand Designs Home Collection launched in Australia on Friday, with the range featuring cushions, wall art and rugs inspired by the high-end architectural forms and functions that have become synonymous with the television series.
Reflecting current interior trends, the Home Collection further builds on an already formidable Grand Designs brand, including the long-running television program in both the UK and Australia, Grand Designs Australia Magazine, the Grand Designs Live show (on in Sydney from Friday) and a successful book publishing range.
Zara Curtis, general manager FremantleMedia Australia Brand Partnerships, said: “Our research has indicated that the brand Grand Designs resonates very strongly with design enthusiasts as a trusted lifestyle brand. The launch of our home interiors range is our first foray into this space with further expansion intended to capture and inspire the design focused consumer and, of course, extend the values and offerings from this much-loved brand.”
Australia is the first territory in the world to create the Grand Designs Home Collection range with other territories looking to roll out similar lines in the future. Many months in the making, the range is expansive with more than 80 designs including 100% linen cushions, 100% New Zealand wool rugs and framed wall art focused on the modern consumer.
Launching initially through online channels, the range has an intricately designed colour palette with clever reversible patterns for two looks in one and pattern matching to create an individual look. Zara added: “Combining clever design, inspiration and function is part of what makes the Grand Designs TV series so popular and we have brought this to the homewares collection to help consumers make interior decorating that much easier. It’s design-forward though affordable, providing the ultimate edit for this season. We’re sure it will be popular in Australian homes this season and for Christmas.”
The range will be showcased at Grand Designs Live in Sydney from this Friday 24 to Sunday 26 October. Available to purchase online at www.granddesignshomeshop.com and for a limited time, via Temple and Webster.
My scheduled chat with Kevin McCloud in London was delayed by a mere five hours due to his non-stop schedule but he was, of course, worth the wait. The inimitable Grand Designs host arrived with some new sustainable materials made from old air bags and car tyres, capable of making furniture. “This stuff is going to change the world,” he tells me, excitedly. And I think it’s this infectious enthusiasm which is one of the things which makes him so likeable on TV.
A regular visitor to our shores for Grand Designs Live Australia the past three years, Kevin is amazed by and grateful for his popularity on the other side of the world, with more people watching the show in Oz than in the UK. He has a real fondness for the country and its people, telling me the story of how he almost was Australian (his parents had tickets booked but then found out his mother was pregnant with him and decided not to go).
“It’s actually amazing how popular the show is in Australia,” he says, joking that some of the re-runs are so old he has a lot more hair in them. “I’m very, very grateful. Here, Grand Designs is successful and everything else I do is two-thirds as successful. In Australia, Grand Designs is even more successful and everything else I do is just as successful too.”
Kevin, who was appointed MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for services to sustainability in this year’s New Year’s Honours list, says he’s seen more passion in the decoration of houses in parts of Melbourne than he has in the UK. “I’ve probably seen more delight and wonder in Sydney and Melbourne than I have here.” He’s been blown away by Queenslanders (the houses) in Brisbane and loves how the architecture can be so different between states and territories, but always uniquely Australian due to our climate. “I’m really fond of some of the 19th Century and early 20th Century stuff, ” he says.
So, what is Kevin’s own home like? “It’s as shambolic, autobiographical, worn around the edges and unplanned as anybody else’s in truth! You and I know that the rooms we see in mags are highly engineered to meet the demographic and advertisers of that mag. Sometimes I look at those homes with a single pineapple in a bowl on the side and think where’s their toaster?! When we’re filming for the show, I always prefer the homes which are a little more shambolic, they’re more interesting.”
If Kevin was invited into your home he’d probably go straight to your library (if you’re lucky enough to have one) or bookcase (more likely), which he believes gives a great snapshot of someone’s life.
I couldn’t resist asking him how he deals with being an unlikely sex symbol, to which he joked it was a but a myth touted by journalists like me. I think we all know that isn’t true! Certainly not judging by the number of readers who tell me otherwise… “Nobody’s ever thrown their knickers at me anyway, ” he adds.
I was lucky enough to meet Kevin a couple of years ago at a media dinner in Melbourne. I can vouch for him being a thoroughly charming, polite, fun, clever and interesting man. He’s exactly as he seems on the telly! I totally meant to tell him that my husband and I watch an old episode of Grand Designs most nights before bed but I’m not even sure that’s a good thing…
Are you a big Kevin McCloud fan? Good news is he is in Australia for both Grand Designs Live Sydney and Melbourne next month. Hoorah! Even better, all my readers can get $10 off tickets.
Launching in Sydney from 18-20 October and continuing in Melbourne from 25-27 October, the exhibition features a bevy of attractions and more than 200 exhibitors. Visitors will find the best ideas and advice for their homes as well as see and hear from celebrity experts, including both the British and Aussie hosts of the Grand Designs programs, Kevin McCloud and Peter Maddison.
If you watched Offspring or The Block, you may have coveted Ali McNabney-Stevens’ colourful artwork, which has been in a few magazines recently. Behind the scenes, this very humble Melbourne artist and mum is just delighted to be doing what she loves day in, day out.
A fellow Pom, she moved here in 2001 after marrying an Australian. “After 5 years in London, he missed the sunshine and we decided to come for 2 years and that was 12 years ago!” There’s no doubt her surroundings have affected her work, with Melbourne’s bustling art scene and cultural diversity a constant inspiration. “Right from the get-go the artistic side of me was fueled. I am a very happy person here and I like to think that my art is happy. It gives me great pleasure in producing it and I guess I hope in turn that it gives others pleasure to hang it on their walls.”
I do love Kevin McCloud. No, not in that way, as I know so many of my female readers do, and not just because he comes from the same part of south west England as me, or because I’ve been lucky enough to meet him in real life, but because of that twinkle in his eye. When he knows a plan is downright ridiculous, he doesn’t hold back and he’s always, quite annoyingly, right. Equally, when he really loves a project, I can’t get enough of his passion. And that voice. Well, it’s just comforting isn’t it? Is it just me?
Kevin McCloud
I know it’s wrong of me but I am a Pom and I just can’t get into the Australian version (sorry!).
I devoured all 8 episodes of season 10 of Grand Designs (out to buy on DVD this week) in two evenings and it did not disappoint. It kicks off with an actor who buys the ruins of castle he used to play in as a boy and virtually builds a house within its frame. His plans for a theatrical, mock 16th century home were the kind that got Kevin raising an eyebrow or two.
The pilot for her first interiors show of her very own airs on The Lifestyle Channel in a couple of weeks and Shaynna Blaze is hoping you’ll watch so she gets to do a whole series!
No stranger to reality TV, it will be the first time the star of Selling Houses Australia and The Block won’t have co-hosts or judges. “I am totally over the moon, nervous and excited,” she told me. “This is the first show where I carry it on my own so there is a certain fear and responsibility that comes with that but the opportunity to do a show purely about interiors is so incredible. I have been looking at my own show for a while and after talking with Taubmans and The LifeStyle Channel, they saw a gap in the market and this is the result.”
Shaynna says the show is purely about design and decoration for people stuck on where to go next because they’re either scared or lost on where to start in their renovation. “This is a show for people who want to do up their home to live in it, and working on ideas and styles that suit our Australian lifestyle and environment.”
The doors to Grand Designs Live Sydney have just opened at Darling Harbour and I had the chance for a quick look around with Shaynna Blaze and Jamie Durie this morning.
The show is looking great so make sure you try and pop down over the weekend. All you need to know can be found here.
I had such a treat earlier this week when I was invited, along with just two other media, to have an intimate dinner with Kevin McCloud and Peter Maddison in Melbourne. Kevin’s here for the first ever Grand Designs Live Melbourne which kicks off today. I do hope you’re planning to go over the weekend if you’re local. I went to the Sydney show last year and will go again this year (that’s next month). Kevin is only able to attend the Melbourne version so if you can, you really should go along! Having spoken to some of the organisers about the amount of work that has been involved behind the scenes, it’s sure to be fantastic!
Kevin lives in the same part of the UK I’m from, so we chatted about that and all kinds of things including Australian homes, social media and the popularity of Grand Designs here. Kevin, whose brother lives in Sydney, is a big fan of Australia.
Did you know Grand Designs has a bigger following in Australia than the UK? No wonder Grand Designs Live is coming to Sydney in October. I’m going, are you? Buy tickets here.
Universal Magazines and FremantleMediaEnterprises (FME) have today announced the launch of Grand Designs Australia magazine, an exciting new publication in the home design genre.
Following on from the highly successful TV series, the magazine will make its debut in April 2012. Denis Ford, Universal Magazines’ associate publisher, said: “Grand Designs Australia magazine is an exciting new venture into the home design and renovation market for our company.It will be a glossy quarterly publication and will build on the success of the Grand Designs Australia television show screened on the Lifestyle Channel.”
The magazine will showcase the best and most imaginative Australian houses, apartments and interior design from the city, coast and country, including harbourside havens, bushland hideaways and beachside retreats. Aimed at 35-to-54 year-olds with an interest in home design, Grand Designs Australia will include features, information and advice from industry experts on designing, building, renovating and decorating houses and apartments.
Interior designer and managing editor of Universal Magazines’ Home Design series Kate St James, will become managing editor of the new title.
“With the growing interest in building, renovating and decorating spurred on by the plethora of reality TV shows, Grand Designs Australia magazine is a natural progression from the television series to the printed format,” she says. “Our team of expert writers and contributors know the home design industry inside out and will bring inspiring news, information and projects to our design-savvy readers to help them in their quest to create the house of their dreams.”
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