Grand Designs new episode sees crumbling coastguard station in Flamborough transformed into beautiful bird-friendly home

A home in Flamborough has undergone the Grand Designs makeover treatment.

Kevin McCloud and his team joined Zahid and Ferzana as the two ambitiously wanted to give a new purpose to the old coastguard station - and make it a home. No easy feat, but the results were astonishing.

"It's a sort of, horrible mixture of '60s functionality and Edwardian house, and plenty of people I'm sure would like to see that come down," Kevin said as he introduced the audience to the old East Yorkshire coastguard station on his first site visit in 2019.

It had been abandoned for nearly a decade for safety reasons, but the couple bought it when the property went to auction at a guide price of £20,000 - although it soon shot up to £175k. The project was put in the hands of the couple's son - Yusef - a recent architecture graduate with one other project under his belt.

WIth a budget of £325k and a period of around 10 months, the ambitious project was always going to be tight. However a ground survey problem set the start back nine months and forced a redesign. To make matters worse, Yusef left the project - leaving it to his dad to juggle as a developer.

The couple then suffered setback after setback as the site had to be shut down following a visit from a planning enforcement officer. More problems caused by Covid and a mis-measurement of the glass bedroom walls followed, causing further extensive delays.

The next problem was puffins - because of the large population in the area, specialist, much more expensive glass was needed - and was going to take eight months to import from Germany. It was finally installed in March this year - five years after the camera crew first visited the then-crumbling watch tower.

But now, the reborn home is finally completed. "It's quite heroic how it looks out to sea," Kevin exclaims upon seeing the finished project. "Goodness me, it's reborn!"