In message ,
(Biff) wrote:

Why is everyone obsessed with the money but no-one mentions lime, oak
and hand-made glass.

Possibly because money was (or appeared to be) the big conjouring
trick in this episode. From the first five minutes it was obvious to
anyone with half a brain that £65k or £70k or whatever wasn't going to
be anywhere near enough money, especially given

a: need to replace like-with-like (your lime, oak, glass and
due to the listed building status)

b: stated aim to install large amounts of high-tech gadgetry

c: design for new kitchen in oak with glass wall and roof

d: they obviously bought it more through heart than head ("we
just fell in love with it").

I for one was incredibly jealous of the whole concept. I would love to
have £750k (or whatever the final total was) to play with and do
something like this. I too would probably have pulled out all the
stops to use appropriate and sympathetic replacements where necessary,
but given a mere £70k at the outset I think I would probably have
known that it wasn't going to be enough.

I suppose that *if* the house had been structurally sound, and *if*
none of the timbers had needed replacing then £70k would have looked a
little more realistic, but you only needed two facts to be able to
guess that this wasn't the case: the house was several hundred years
old, and had had no work done on it within living memory.

Was that what you meant?

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove: http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/
Two free issues: http://www.livtech.co.uk/ Living With Technology
.... Dessert? I'll take a piece of cherry pi.