Grand Designs

This edition follows the extraordinary story of estate manager Ed Waghorn and his wife Rowena, who live a virtually self-sufficient lifestyle with their four children on an eight-acre smallholding in Herefordshire.

Four years ago, Ed set out to build a five-bedroom home for his family almost single-handedly, on a tiny budget of just over £80,000, scraped together from their savings.

Using recycled materials that no one else wanted, wood from the nearby forests and stone from around the site, Ed starts work on the house, the plans for which exist mostly in his head.

Gradually, he begins to sculpt an organic, hobbit-style, timber-framed, curvy house on the hillside. But Ed and Rowena live in a different world to the rest of us, where time moves more slowly and deadlines don't matter.

They are so intent on creating a thing of beauty and quality that they lose sight of their end goal. The house goes up achingly slowly.

And, as the process of building becomes a way of life for Ed, Kevin McCloud can't help wondering whether the children will grow up and leave home before this house is finished.