Grand Designs is as much a monument to human achievement as it is failure!
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=3AlsMEiAMvM [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=CBpRLzbrCa8
The most dramatic one that I noted was a very contemporary museum looking home. The owner stressed how long they had spent planning it, and how you only get once chance, and it would be his dream home. He completes the house in the Surrey woods (it was beautiful, to be sure). Sells within a year and buys property on the Costa del Sol in Spain.
So you have two choices; struggle and be miserable for as long as you can before it all falls apart (but in your dream home) or sell up for financial safety and compromise on the location.
The mid project reveal is always "surprise we are pregnant". It brings me great added joy when they are building a 'dream' 3 bedroom house and it is the 3rd kid that they are pregnant with.
Since my boys are teenagers now, I spent the pandemic building a rather nice lofted bed setup out of baltic birch ply for their shared room. It gives them their own personal space (had them help design use cases) and more privacy than most kids in the world have. One is autistic and hypersensitive to the others habits, but I was able to mitigate 95% of that with visual blocking, acoustic materials, and a HomePod mini for pink noise.
You make do with what you have. Some of son’s friends live in 5-10M houses, some live in trailers, some in apartments. I think they all understand that, while they probably want more, they’re lucky to have this.
Fortunately, my wife isn’t pregnant… I don’t think.
Reminds me of my grandpa’s house kinda. Well, he’s from Southern Europe, so he built a brick box amongst a bunch of mid century/post WWII vinyl siding houses. Nothing wrong with it, but sticks out. Sure is solid though. And a cube is a good use of materials to maximize inside space to perimeter ratio.
Take a shot every time Kevin says "bespoke"
Have you heard of the TV programme Grand Designs? It's just this over and over again. Sometimes the wife is pregnant, sometimes they're living in a caravan on site. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs
They're not trying to build anything as simple as a house, either, the "grand" part implies some mad architectural vision that will become unliveable within months while also looking completely horrendous in its rural setting.