Recently, YouTube recommended some videos from a YouTube channel Kirsten Dirksen of faircompanies.com, don’t know about that website but the videos are worth watching. They are simple and not so heavily edited or scripted, sound recording isn’t 100% perfect, but the content is great. From its own description:

Videos about simple living, self-sufficiency, small (and tiny) homes, backyard gardens (and livestock), alternative transport, DIY, craftsmanship and philosophies of life.

It seems that there is a trend or realization of reality, therefore a channel is born for documenting this style of living, philosophy of simple life, if you will.

When the first video of this channel got recommended to me, I didn’t want to watch because I am not interested in seeing people squeezing in a narrow space, where they would call home. Maybe deep inside of me, I was afraid that history would repeat all over again, because that’s when I thought I wasn’t going to watch people build their “Grand Designs.”

SH            Grand Designs
mo          /---------------\
am    _/---/  /\  \x\   /x/  \
le   |     \ / ---------------\
ls   |------\ / \   /----------\
/\    \-|    |    \|  | | | |  |
[]       \----------\__________/

After first video, I watched another, and I kept going. Same thing happened to be on Kevin McCloud’s Grand Designs:

Presenter Kevin McCloud follows some of Britain’s most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams

The YouTube channel and Grand Designs are not about the houses solely, but more about how the habitants get the house and why. After the first few episodes of Grand Designs, I wondered why there was always a couple, who would be building their dream house. Why not a single person? There must be someone who wanted to, then an episode started with a couple again, but the husband died of cancer at the very stage of building, leaving a child to the wife. The window downsized the house further, they didn’t have enough money to build a big house, in order to have a house for her and her child, she carried on and finished the house.

That’s just one episode and there are more, stories, heartbreaks, issues, problems. Watching the show is like watching someone’s journey, journey of struggles and battling. The show kept tracking on projects, a few even more than a decade. You see people use their wisdom, or get stuck in their stubbornness. The show is simply extremely addictive.

Grand Designs are not all huge houses or architecturally sound magnificent master piece, there are quite some budget builds, structures built with mud, straws, waste materials. You often see self-builders picking up brush to paint the wall, putting in insulations, all sorts of labor works, because they run out of cash, even live on credit card and pay the trades with cards. It doesn’t matter it’s a million dollar budget, or a 100k, when they have no cash left, then they have to do whatever to finish the build, or they lose everything. A few projects, the self-builders might even have to sell it after finished, because over-budget and would not be able to pay off the repayment.

It’s not all sad stories or sweating labors, one episode about a woodsman, who built his house on the field he manages, then revisit show revealed he got married and had a baby in that house. On second revisit, they had another child and the extension house was built. There are some quite happy stories or unexpected surprises, although unexpected babies usually came during the building in the show.

Small or tiny homes seem to make a lot of sense after watching the show. There are few grand designs, I could wonder how on Earth would they clean the house? How to change the light bulb on that freaking high ceiling? That house is just ridiculous. I must say small house doesn’t feel right, either. If you need to scoot over all the time, that’s too small. But it’s really not about the size of house, but the creativity when I watching the channel.

They are good channel and great show, if the show is on the listing, try watching it, just be warned that you may get hooked. There are also some spin-offs and related shows of Grand Designs, also good shows, such as Grand Designs Australia or Restoration Man.

The ASCII, no idea what I drew, like self-build without architect’s drawing…