Rod wrote in message .4...
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,

Still no banana. The fitted kitchen alone would have run to 20k plus
probably that much for the extension and a few grand for the glass
link. That leaded glass window would have been in the thousands,
probabably 10k for heating and electrics on a 'normal' house. The
initial budget was woefully inadequate but seemed to basically be a
joke - as was the chilli bottle stuffing. "We're £120,000 short so i'm
going to raise £100 selling chilli's in oil." I rather suspect that
all of the two lawyers "working on it themselves" was just for the
cameras and they actually did next to nothing.

Either they started with far more than they said (and the initial
figure was for 'dramatic effect') or there was an advance on
inheritance from some very rich parents.


There have been many GD programs where money has not been splashed around
(classics being the Welsh hillside and the wooden house in the woods). But
did you really feel that these Gloucester lawyers would have appeared at
all for nothing?

I don't quite understand that either. I know that there are kickbacks
on fixtures and fittings (it's not just GD but newspaper and magazine
features in the future) and I can see that architects have a lot to
gain from their designs being featured but i think a lot of it must
just be showing off. People generally come across well on GD compared
to most reality TV.