If anyone knows how to revamp a home, it’s Grand Designs presenter, Kevin McCloud. This year, the show is celebrating 20 years on the small screen, and in that time, he’s seen the wins, the fails – and everything in between, from dream church conversions to boathouse disasters.
Whether you simply want to spruce up your property or you’re planning a full renovation, he's shared with us the big and small tweaks you can make to your home to give it a Grand Designs-style edge.
Here are Kevin's top tips:
Small tweaks
Refresh your paintwork
This will make your home feel brighter and look more polished – but you don’t have to do a full repaint. If you put a squeeze of washing up liquid into a bucket of water, you’ll find you have a fantastic mix for getting marks off paint. It even dissolves the paint slightly, so you can work the paint over scratches and missed bits. If you’ve got gloss paint on your walls, even better. When washed, it turns out beautifully.
Fit some blinds
The good news is that there’s no need to fork out and go the whole hog here. Adding venetian blinds or shutters to the lower half of your windows only will give you lovely clear views of the sky, while also maintaining privacy.
Declutter
My rule of thumb for decluttering is to get a storage container and fill it with all the stuff you want to throw away. Then go back to it after three or six months (you decide the period) - and if you haven’t thought about it once, chuck it. If you’ve missed it, keep it. The key is not to throw everything away! People think you have to clear out a room and buy a whole new set of furniture to make it look better, but that’s a myth. Buy a new sofa and new place mats, but keep that old lamp or the piece of furniture you had when you were a student because that is what makes the room exciting.
A little more labour
Add a skylight
This will give your home an instant upgrade. Believe it or not, they add two and a half times more light than a vertical window – and bringing more light into a room makes it feel bigger because it gives you a sense of space and height. Want a cheaper alternative? Clean your windows. This can actually double the amount of light coming into your building!
Get green-fingered
If you want to add value to your home, take a look at your garden. Most people’s gardens are terrible – they don’t do the building any favours at all – but laying out a really pretty garden with plants in it will sell a house. Planting looks generous and it suggests that the owners have taken care and expressed love for the place. If you’re getting a professional in, go with a recommendation; trust is essential and you’ll be halfway there.
The full works
Change up the layout
You can essentially squeeze a new build into an existing build by altering your internal layouts. Look at a Victorian terraced house or a Georgian terraced house and you’ll notice that the layout is generally determined by chimneys and drains. But since many of us don’t use open fires anymore and we now have machinery like macerators, which allow us to put the drains in where we like, layouts can be changed relatively easily. Think about which area has the best light, which is the quietest, and how you can get more use out of your space. But plan properly and budget wisely. If you’re a very hopeful person, double your anticipated budget, if you’re quite a hopeful person, add on 50%, if you’re a realist, add on 20% - and if you’re an absolute fascist, add 15%.
Revisit your insulation
When you’re knocking a building about a bit, it gives you a fantastic opportunity to look again at the insulation and improve the thermal efficiency. Relatively speaking, it’s inexpensive to do and in the longer-term, it reduces your bills. So it’s a win-win. If you’re in a listed building or in a heritage home built before the First World War, it’s worth looking at a downloadable PDF from the Bath Preservation Trust called ‘Warmer Bath’, which talks about practical measures for dealing with older and listed buildings. The Old House Handbook published by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, is a great guide too.
Put in better flooring
If you’re planning an extension, pick your flooring wisely. I’d be looking at using a heavy thermal mass floor, like concrete with glazing, which would maximise solar gain in the winter, but minimise overheating in the summer. Once you begin to think about it quite intelligently, you can get the building to work for you.
There you have it, Kevin's top tips for transforming your home. Will you be trying these yourself?
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Kevin McCloud will be appearing at Grand Designs Live at The NEC, from 9-13 October 2019. For more information and tickets visit granddesignslive.com
