It started as a dream home perched on clifftops with stunning views of the sea, but the Grand Designs project quickly turned into a living nightmare.
Chesil Cliff House in North Devon featured in one of the 'saddest ever' episodes of the Channel 4 show after running out of money and costing the owner his marriage.
And the lighthouse-style home is still on the market for £10million almost 10 years after the property renovation journey began - but it's still unfinished.
Whoever buys owner Edward Short’s five-bedroom waterfront home will still have to add bathrooms, a kitchen, flooring and light fixtures – despite its multi-million pound price tag.
Misfortune beset the project leaving the house unfinished and with the family plunged into millions of pounds worth of debt.
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The owner said the project had "dominated his life". Work on the cliff house has set Edward back £5million, doubling the £2.5million budget he set during original planning application in 2011, and also cost him his marriage to ex-wife Hazel.
At the time, the scale and design of the home even impressed Grand Design's presenter Kevin McCloud who said it was going to be "something very special" when the episode aired in October 2019.
Couple Edward and Hazel had big ambitions for when they appeared on the Channel 4 hit show back in October 2019, with plans to build the extravagant coastal home to escape their busy London lives with daughters Nicole and Lauren.
Located at Down End Point, a popular beauty spot in North Devon, the five-bedroom house would include a four-storey tower offering stunning views across Croyde Bay, as well as a sauna, cinema and a 60ft glass-edged infinity pool.
But the project was hit with spiralling debt, supply problems and bad weather causing viewers to brand the unfinished house an 'eyesore', the size of the project 'greedy', and the episode 'brutal', 'stressful' and the 'saddest episode ever'.
It eventually ended in disaster as the couple ended up splitting, while the family were plunged into millions of pounds of debt.
Speaking to Devon Live in March 2020, Edward said locals who were fed up of seeing the unfinished grey 'eyesore', but he also asked them to "stick with it". He said then: "I know it's a mess, and I have to fix that - but when it is finished it will be amazing. Judge it when it's finished."
He told the Telegraph last year: "There’s no point in regrets, but obviously if I had any idea of what it would cost the marriage and my family, I wouldn’t have done it. I had started it; it’s not easy to back out of this."
He added: "There were quite a few days where I looked temptingly at the cliff edge and thought life might be better down there, but that wouldn’t have helped anyone, would it? I couldn’t give up on that image I had of [the house].”
Edward himself has moved on and now has a new partner Jalia, an NHS nurse, who he lives with in Bath. Although once the sale of Chesil Cliff House goes through, they plan to buy a place in Devon.
Property firm Knight Frank are selling the luxury home, which is made up of a main house and an annexe known as The Eye, so buyers have 5-8 bedrooms to play with.
The property is set to feature in a new episode of Grand Designs, expected to air in the autumn.
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