It's stressful enough having work done on your home but to have the usually tortuous process filmed for television surely adds an extra layer onto the challenge.
But Sarah Beeny's new property show Little House Big Plans on Channel 4 is not about focusing on issues, spiralling budgets and timescales that slip through the home owners' fingers. The property expert's new property programme is all about finding home owners who have small and want big, and how they have managed to create something super special without taking on and tackling a massive 'grand design'.
The show is packed full of homeowners getting the biggest creative change for smaller budgets that match what they have available to spend, with Sarah and fellow presenter architect Damion Burrows, plus the film crew, visiting regularly to document the renovation, restoration or remodelling; and sometimes all three.
This new series includes some hardy Welsh renovators and rebuilders who have happily shared their experiences for the benefit of the viewers who might then feel inspired to go from little to big. Becca and Dan had to tackle not just the pandemic but also a build that had a habit of throwing up surprises that bashed the budget, a pregnancy, and a worrying family illness. Find out more about that here.
In episode six viewers meet Rhys and Shannon, a couple who can't quite believe what they have achieved at their dream home in Merthyr Tydfil, with the help of an architect who wanted to push boundaries on a 'standard' rear box extension. They decided to go bold and be brave and have a super-sized home that was somewhat unexpected.
And there was one driving force that had to be at the core of the dated home's amazing transformation - space. Software engineer Rhys says: "I grew up in a three bed council house with my seven brothers and sisters, my mother and father, so there were 10 of us there."
Shannon, a staff nurse, could share happy childhood memories that also occurred within a packed family home, adding: "I was very similar, I grew up in a three bed, semi-detached old council house with five siblings - a very crowded house, so to have what we have now, I think it makes us appreciate it even more."
But for the couple to create space they decided to lose space in an extension design that Sarah Beeny describes as "throwing away the rulebook when renovating their small home" that also included two major setbacks.
The detached house was bought in autumn 2017 for a cost of £232,000 and at that time it would be fair to say it was stuck in the past not just in decor but also design. There was a long thin lounge, small dining room, kitchen, utility and cloakroom on the ground floor and four bedrooms, a family bath and ensuite upstairs - but that was all about to change - really, really change.
In 2018 the build started but when Shannon became pregnant the couple decided to move in with relatives to be more comfortable. But almost immediately the three-month schedule fell behind because of multiple problems, including the need to rethink the foundations which cost the couple an extra £6k.
Add to that trauma, the first delivery of bifold doors offered their own nightmare scenario as they didn't fit, pushing the timetable on by another six weeks to wait for a new set that fit. The nine-month build was finished just a few weeks before the baby was born.
Rhys tells WalesOnline: "The foundations we discovered needed to be a raft just as the builder started. That meant more cash straight away. The floor-to-ceiling bi-folding doors turn up already behind schedule and were far too short for the opening.
"This had a big impact on the rest of the trades who were waiting to start inside once we were water tight. With Christmas fast approaching and only a few months to go before baby VitaRose arrived it's fair to say I was seriously stressed!"
Damion visits the couple's home during the programme when the build has been completed and he is totally enthralled, as well as shocked, by what he encounters in the new ground floor layout of the house.
The new open-plan living area covers a whopping 80 square metres and there's also a TV room, study, utility room and shower room to replace the former ground floor cloakroom. But within the 16 metre single-storey rear extension it's the new gallery mezzanine where the gasps of visitors can be heard the loudest.
By removing 10 square metres of the upper floor a double-height gallery and mezzanine has been created above that directly visually connects to the vast kitchen diner lounge below.
Damion is excited by this unexpected feature, saying: "This is not what you expect from the outside - it looks like a kind of polite, nice little detached house from the outside and then you come in here and it's like... a little bit Miami and art gallery! It's got a really lovely feel to it. It gives you such a sense of space, air and light - it's all of those things that you wouldn't expect!"
No wonder the couple love this slice of the design, saying it's one of their favourite features of the house and a spot upstairs where they like to linger and admire the view below. The open feeling across the two floors created by the gallery might be amazing during daylight but any worries about night time privacy have been considered.
Rhys tells WalesOnline: "It's only one bedroom in the mezzanine, which is ours. We have cream curtains we use during the night and if we have guests. The windows opposite the gallery are driven by solar-powered black-out blinds."
But to get to this finished stage of creating the couple's new home that they truly love took a clever architect to come up with a design that matched the couple's hopes and dreams for a spacious yet distinctive abode.
To do that, architect Steven George looked at the house as whole rather than as a collection of long, thin, dark and unconnected spaces, which meant he could see and use areas of unclaimed space.
Another wonderful addition to the new ground floor area is the now seamless sightlines - from front door to extension to garden without anything other than people getting in the way of the flowing internal, external view.
And although the home is now so much bigger the clever design and use of glass has ensured that there are multiple visual connections between spaces - left to right, up and down, inside and out. But there's one focal point that has Sarah the most impressed, she says: "It's the floating mezzanine with glass balustrades that is without doubt the focal point."
It was a brave decision to take a section of the floor out and replace it with absolutely nothing tangible except views, but it helps when the brainchild of the design is Rhys' an old school friend, so the couple felt comfortable letting Steven push the design to the brink of the unexpected.
But Damion is rather perplexed and directly asks: "To take floor space out and punch up, what it gives you is amazing but it goes against the grain of what we think a house is. How do you convince someone to punch a hole through the middle of their house?!"
Steven says: "They were really brave clients, right at the beginning they said - whatever you want, we trust you." Rhys adds: "It creates a unique living space for us - even though we've lost space, we've gained a lot more."
But it's Shannon that sums up the whole experience with the benefit of hindsight now that the £175k house and garden transformation is complete, which Rhys recons has increased the home's value to between £525,000 and £550,000.
She says: "I never imagined that this would be our home, we're very proud of what we have achieved. We knew our end goal was to have our dream home and going through the building site that we used to call home - you have to go through all of that to get the pot of gold at the end."
All episodes of Sarah Beeny's Little House Big Plans are now available to watch on All 4 or Thursday evening at 8pm on Channel 4. And don't miss the best dream homes in Wales, renovation stories and interiors, join the Amazing Welsh Homes newsletter which is sent to your inbox twice a week.
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