Treehouses are for little people, aren't they?
They're places of sanctuary and excitement,
imagination, fun, escape.
A place where you can leave the grown-up world down there.
But imagine
if you could make a place like this your home,
complete with electricity and running water.
That's exactly what one couple,
who I met in 2013, had in mind.
Jon and Noreen's romantic plan
was to build their own wooden house up in the trees.
It gives you that sort of peaceful woodland glade feeling.
To live amongst this, this is a real privilege.
Such a remarkable setting called for a remarkable construction method,
one where no tree roots would be harmed in the process,
made more complicated by the house's anti-gravity design.
It's a series of three stepped boxes,
every box is slipped. Yes.
The structural engineer is struggling with it at the moment.
They ran over schedule before they'd even broken ground.
This is not where we wanted to be, in any shape or form.
But there was no going back -
their life savings were invested in this dream.
We do not have any room for manoeuvre financially.
We cannot get that money from anywhere else.
It tested them to physical and emotional extremes.
Yeah, it's not good and I do worry.
Progress was slow,
and rooms just remained unfinished.
Sometimes I think I've taken on too much. I could do with a break now.
Of course, construction in the canopy
was never going to be that easy,
because, for all of nature's wonder and awe,
comes also unpredictability,
so I am very excited to go back after seven years
and see how their house is fairing.
But first, here's their story.
Once upon a time, the earth was covered in trees.
But we're losing our trees at the rate of one football pitch
of natural forest every two seconds.
We shouldn't be cutting down trees -
we should be learning to live among them.
That's amazing!
What a setting.
It is, isn't it? It's absolutely beautiful.
I'm with plumber Jon and ceramic artist Noreen,
a couple who want more than anything else
to live up in the tree canopy.
Before they start to build their own treehouse,
we've come to Belgium to see a treehouse
that might help me understand what's so special about woodland living.
Go on, go on touch it.
No, I can't touch it! No, you can almost touch it.
Look at that fantastic bark. Look at that bark.
And you've got the shadows dancing on the roof
and that branch just goes over the corner. It's really pretty.
It is. It's absolutely gorgeous.
It's that relationship - that's what we've got to try and achieve.
Here, you're up inside under the foliage,
in the canopy, amongst the birds and the squirrels.
Yes, I think there is that connection,
when you touch the bark, even at this distance...
What do you see when you touch the bark?
What do you see when you look a bit further?
And what do you see right in the distance?
I think on our plot we've got those three things,
but we have to make it work. Yep, yep.
If you're going to build a treehouse,
the rules of engagement completely change.
What this simply is about is lifting you onto a platform in the trees.
And getting close to the trees. Yeah.
And getting close to them, yeah.
Jon and Noreen dream of a treehouse for themselves just like this.
And they're going to build one,
but in a very different kind of location.
Jon knew of a little patch of woodland in his home town
of Dursley in Gloucestershire,
which is hemmed in by a supermarket car park
and a Methodist chapel.
When it came up for sale, he and Noreen were smitten.
You looked at it as a kid and loved it
and peeped through a hole and thought, "That looks amazing!",
and it was completely overgrown.
It was unloved. And the trees... We wanted to just take care of it.
This tiny, abandoned half acre of urban woodland was once a garden.
It's in a conservation area
and it has nearly 30 protected trees -
some lovely ash and lime trees, and a majestic Scots pine.
What is it for you that kind of connects you to trees?
What is it that matters about being in amongst them?
I think it's just the whole thing -
it gives you that sort of peaceful woodland glade feeling.
You step off the high street and you walk down here.
What, sort of damp, you mean?
LAUGHTER Yes, damp.
Shaded when it's 30 degrees in a good British summer,
but sitting on a balcony looking at the raindrops drop off the leaves,
there's something special about that.
They were here before we were here,
they're going to be here when we go,
and you know, that's brilliant to be part of that.
I mean, you can buy a new house, you can plant a tree
and it may get to a reasonable size by the time you move on,
but I mean to live amongst this, this is a real privilege.
How much did you pay for it?
Er, at the end of the day, it was £85,000.
That's all right though, isn't it? It is. But with no consent?
With no consent. No.
It's either a very expensive garden,
or a very well-priced building plot.
But it had been up for sale for at least 18 months before we bought it.
So, did you sound out the District Council?
Did you sound out the planning department and ask what the feasibility? Oh, yes.
You know what they said? What did they say? Absolutely no way.
And yet you still went ahead and bought it. We did.
Our sense was if we could make something that was truly different,
which added to the local community
that there'd be a good chance,
so it was basically on that basis that we pushed forward.
Jon and Noreen were proved right.
They eventually got their planning permission,
but the conditions are harsh.
They must not disturb any of the trees or their roots,
so fixing the house into the ground is going to be quite a challenge -
one that local architects Millar Howard Workshop enthusiastically took on.
To avoid the tangle of roots,
they came up with the ingenious solution of anchoring the house
with slender screw piles.
To protect the trees, they won't be using any concrete.
Instead of foundations,
there'll be a steel frame above ground connected to the piles.
The lowest and smallest of the three wooden boxes
that make up the house will be Noreen's studio.
The middle floor box will be the living space.
It has verandas on three sides.
And the top floor will contain the bedrooms,
40 feet up among the branches.
It'll sit under a flat roof.
The top two floors will be clad in native larch,
and the basement will get a skin of reflective,
polished steel that should mirror the surroundings
and help the house appear to float.
On the top floor, there'll be three en-suite guest bedrooms
and the master suite.
And, in the spirit of a treehouse,
a 12-foot high narrow walkway through the trees
will bring you to the front door
and into the large L-shaped living space.
Every window will be carefully placed
to capture a favourite view,
and the verandas will take Jon and Noreen within touching distance
of the higher branches.
Landscaping will be by Mother Nature herself,
the point of this building being
to place you in intimate contact with the rawness
and energy of the natural world.
Jon and Noreen met 24 years ago.
They recently sold their big, old, draughty five-bedroomed house,
bought this plot, and moved into an onsite cabin.
Whiling away evenings in the cabin,
Jon has lovingly built his own model of their house-to-be.
I love your trees.
Yeah, they're all to scale.
It's a series of three stepped boxes,
and each layer doesn't conform -
there's no contiguous walls all the way up, are there?
No. Every box is slipped. Yep.
So they appear separate.
That's what the structural engineer is struggling with at the moment.
And who does this? Who builds this?
Well, I'll be helping doing a lot of it -
I'll be project managing it, or we'll be project managing it. Yeah.
And how much is that then?
At this stage with the piling,
if there aren't any unforeseen instances depth wise,
268.
LAUGHTER
At the moment!
I mean, that has gone up from 250.
What, is that for everything? Yeah.
Yeah. 268, £268,000, all in, done.
Yes. We have already been making cuts to hold it at that.
Can you afford that?
Yes. We have... That was part of our contingency in the budget,
it's just that we are...
You know, we really do not want a mortgage at the end of this.
How long will it take you to do?
I'm hoping about nine months.
That's what the target is.
So, as soon as the piles go in the ground, then we'll know.
Nine months from the piles.
When's that scheduled for, then?
Either side of this Christmas. OK. It was going to be before,
but like all things I think we're looking at just after now. OK.
So, just nine months to build the home they want
in the town they love.
Jon was brought up here
and is as deeply rooted as his trees.
Is this your school? Yep. This a Church of England school?
It is. When I was five, six, seven,
that sort of age, I used to go to that school.
I can understand by circumstance that you'd be born here
and go to school here, but why stay?
Contentment or happiness is an internal thing,
I think you can sort of wander round looking for it,
but I think you can make that where you live
and I think trying to create a slightly better environment
and improve where you live, and do a bit for where you live,
I think that gives you a certain sense of satisfaction,
and it is beautiful.
This little patch of land has a lot to live up to.
Invested here are the dreams of two passionate people.
In buying this site for £85,000,
Jon and Noreen were making a decision purely
from the heart.
They'd been told they wouldn't get planning permission,
and yet they carried on.
They were determined that this would, should...
was going to work.
Amazing, isn't it?
Jon grew up with this site.
He knew that he was going to be able to live here.
In a way, it was always his, this place.
Right from the start, however, Jon and Noreen meet trouble.
They were hoping to sink their pile foundations around Christmas.
They didn't.
They can't do any construction until they have
the structural engineering drawings for the whole house.
All Jon and his old friend Stewart can do,
is prepare the ground by laying down a mat to protect the tree roots.
As you can see from this diagram
done by the arboriculturist,
the Scots Pine, for instance,
closest to the cabin where we're living,
the crown is that wide, but the tree roots area that you have
to protect is sort of one and a half, twice as wide.
So, as the pathway which is at the top of the picture here
comes across, that entire area
that will have vehicles going across it,
has to be protected so we don't damage the roots.
The difficulties of building on this plot shouldn't be underestimated.
First of all, they can't use any concrete to form foundations.
They have to avoid all the tree roots,
and then there's the anti-gravity design of the house itself.
So, since time immemorial really,
people have built tall structures,
by doing this with bits of building.
Ziggurats and pyramids. It's very, very solid,
it centres the building
it works with gravity.
Whereas of course Jon and Noreen are doing something entirely different.
They're doing the opposite of this.
What they're doing is they are starting
with Noreen's workshop at the bottom,
and then there's an overhanging bit, like that,
and then there's a top floor, which does that.
I mean,
they've got to try and keep this structure up,
in amongst the trees, on pile foundations.
It is a real caramel shortbread conundrum.
How on earth do you make sure
the top floors are properly supported
and connected to the piles below?
Months go by,
and Jon and Noreen still haven't got their structural drawings.
The timber company who hired their structural engineer has pulled out
and now they are waiting for a second structural engineer
to deliver.
Well, we've been waiting for these calculations over eight months now.
We've been promised them for over two months.
And they have never arrived, so...
It's really frustrating,
because you're just so keen to get on,
and you're so keen, you know, we desperately want to start.
It's not just the waiting. The costs are going up.
Jon and Noreen's new structural engineer thinks
they need to double the amount of steel to anchor the house
into the ground.
It did get to the point two or three weeks ago
where we actually thought "Can we continue?"
If this is actually the costs that are coming in now,
we actually thought, "Can we continue?" Mm.
They may love them, but their trees seem to be biting back.
To look at, you wouldn't know
that Jon and Noreen's plot is bang in the centre of a town.
Even so, they want to be as self-sufficient as possible.
While waiting for their structural drawings to materialise,
Jon has found his own water supply,
in the non-orthodox way.
You got this source of yours, your borehole,
you've got that to the right depth and the right place?
Yep, I dowsed it but I had another top water dowser
to check it just before I paid for the rig to come in
and it was spot on. You do this quite a lot, don't you?
You're an official dowser, as it were?
It's like playing basketball.
You might not get every ball through the hoop,
but you get better at it the more you practice,
the more you're in tune.
I want to have a go at finding the underground spring.
First, purge your demons.
What we want to get you to do is programming the brain,
connecting with the body because it's the body's response.
The whole point about dowsing is that it's not this that's doing anything at all... It's your body.
It's your body and your head which is detecting something. Yup.
This is just an amplifier.
Perhaps a little bit more upright. That's it, that's good.
So, just thinking about that underground stream.
Thinking about that underground stream. Yeah.
Oh, I'm going to have to... Oh!
If it's anywhere, it's right here.
I think that's about it, yeah. Is it?
Yes, it's curving round gently down towards there.
Seriously? Exactly, yeah. Spot on. You're a natural!
Two bits of wire. Look!
In the height of summer comes a breakthrough.
It's taken eight months to get here,
but today they can sink the 16 screw piles
that'll anchor their treehouse into the ground.
It's been a long old haul to get to this stage
so it's nice something's starting.
The way these screw piles work is surprisingly simple.
They rely on a thread,
just like these rely on a tiny, tiny thread
in order to hold the house in place.
Now, it's best demonstrated if I screw this
into the wood,
and if I then...
represent the forces of nature...
..by tying a sling to that. OK.
Right Jon, when you're ready?
OK? Yeah!
Great, I'm flying. Hey, Hang on!
Hey!
Today was great.
It's more than the foundations going in.
It's like literally putting your mark in the ground,
connecting with it.
I think we're on our way now.
But Jon's optimism is misplaced.
A full eight months since the piling,
there is still little to see.
Jon and Noreen have just endured their second winter here
waiting for the detailed structural drawings.
This is not where we wanted to be. In any shape or form.
They've never had a generous budget -
a carefully balanced 268,000,
so every estimate and every bill is a worry.
It's that continual haggling,
that continual hassle, and not just haggling for the sake of it -
just to stay exactly where you are,
otherwise you're slipping backwards all the time. Mm.
That's the real challenge,
it's that continual unrelenting pressure
and trying to earn a living at the same time.
Just a few weeks later, at last,
the steel frame is springing into life.
Their third, and hopefully last, structural engineer
has devised his own clever solution for keeping this top-heavy building
stable and rooted.
So, that's where we've introduced the diagonal bracing.
And then the same on the other side, like that,
so that gives you... That stops the whole thing from swaying.
And he's saving money.
This design has ten tons of steel,
compared with the previous design that had 18 tons of steel.
It will save I think around about £2,000 a ton,
so that's, you know, £16,000.
And the steel frame is on its way to site,
on a friend's tractor and trailer.
The treehouse is, at last, growing.
And the frame, thank goodness.
At last, we're above the ground.
You're right up against the tree too.
Yes. There's a small steel to come out yet on that side.
Good heavens. That is impressive.
To be able to work within the trees, as you have done,
and there's more yet to come.
There's quite a big pile of steel over there...
Yeah, we're coming right out to that pile there.
Oh, what, this one here? Yeah!
Even with the protective mat,
a conventional crane would crush the tree roots.
But an old school friend is helping Jon
with his own state-of-the-art mini tele-handler
that he's designed himself,
with intriguing triangular tracked wheels.
Everything that you see here has been lifted into place
with this, and we've been working on this uneven slope.
You know, you have to be careful, but it's...
In terms of getting your centre of balance?
Yeah. It's surprised us as to how stable
and how little damage it's done to the ground.
So, is this a prototype, this?
It's the second one in the country.
There are two very, very, important technical tools used
to manoeuvre steel on site.
One is a crane like this,
and the other is a five-metre length of string.
They're both really important as each other.
This steel frame is doing what it should -
bolting together as designed.
Until we get to a plate that has had to be offset
to avoid a tree root,
which means trying to fit a bent leg.
It very slowly wants to be tapped over.
All right, tap this corner where it's touching...
You could almost grind a couple of mil off this join here.
But with a bit of elbow grease, power tools
and careful manipulation,
the cranked leg gets sorted.
The steel frame, at £15,000,
is their biggest ticket item so far.
Its complexity and delicacy
has cost Jon and Noreen £14,000 in engineering fees alone.
So far, with all the bills in,
they've spent one third of their modest £268,000 budget.
The next challenge for their wallet will be the timber frame.
So, when it comes to the timber frame, are you outsourcing that?
Well, after going here, there and everywhere
and the convoluted design journey we've been on with it,
it's designed to be made on site,
so that's what we're going to do,
so I'm going to probably step into the breach.
You. We do not have any room for manoeuvre financially,
we cannot get that money from anywhere else.
For various reasons, that is it - it has to be built for that,
we're not going to magic some money from somewhere. That is it.
This is a dangerous decision.
The timber frame will be complicated,
it's going to be over 12 metres up in the air
and Jon's a plumber, not a carpenter.
But there is one secret weapon local boy Jon has up his sleeve.
If Jon hadn't been able to find his bespoke mini tele-handler,
of which there are only two in the country,
then he'd have had to instead hired a much larger six-wheeled crane
that he'd have parked just there... Oh, no, he couldn't have done that
because they couldn't have got onto site - there's no access.
He'd have had to park an even bigger crane than that
behind the Methodist chapel over there,
or even in the supermarket car park.
And that's the point. All the problems to do with this site
are to do with access, slope and the trees.
And all the solutions are thanks to Jon having grown up in this area
and knowing anybody who's anybody.
Thank God for school mates.
20 months in, Jon has turned into Tarzan
and with yet one more old school friend, Julian,
he's building his frame from slices of tree up in the trees.
They're now ready for the glulam beams,
which will support the cantilevered top floor.
One, two, three. But there is no crane here to help them.
They cannot damage the tree roots.
25 kilos a man for lifting.
This is 225 kilos,
and there's...a couple of us lifting it.
I had Weetabix this morning!
Jon's been lucky to add another willing volunteer
to his team for this heavy lifting.
Another old friend, who is a yacht engineer,
is taking his holiday here.
No, it's been very interesting,
It's actually one of the better holidays I've ever had, I think.
OK... Ready? One, two three.
40 feet high up in the canopy,
Jon and friends are turning into heroes of the forest.
It's on my shoulder. I've got it as well.
I've got it, it's easy.
Only use a British Standard milk crate.
Needs about another 20 mil to get it in line here.
20 mil. Down. Perfect!
Timber by timber,
floor by floor,
Jon, Julian, Noreen and friends put the house together.
Summer turns to autumn,
the weather takes a turn,
and the strain begins to show.
It's taken nearly two years to get this far.
Sometimes I think I've taken on too much,
I could do with a break now,
but we've got to get it watertight,
so those extra hours make the difference now.
Jon's dedication is amazing.
He just keeps going. He, er, he just keeps going.
I don't know how he does it sometimes.
Neither do I.
This building is turning into a monster
that threatens to devour them.
And the consequences are plain to see.
It's almost shocking
to hear Noreen talking about how this project
has depleted them physically and emotionally.
Buildings do that.
They have a habit of draining every ounce of reserve out of you.
And at the same time, they play this game.
They also... They can also inspire you.
At this stage, this building is leading them on,
it's giving them some hope,
it's suggesting that actually things are
going to be all right in the end.
But they are absolutely on the knife edge here.
You know? It's like playing with the building, a game of daredevil.
With heroic persistence, working seven day weeks,
Jon hits a key target,
and the house is ready for the windows before the end of the year.
I've got it. OK? Yeah.
And with the windows in,
Jon and Noreen now have a weatherproof shell
to work in over the winter.
For the first time, there are proper rooms to see.
So you'll walk in - there's an entrance hall,
stairs up to the first floor.
Yeah, yeah.
And then a door into the living area.
So one big, sort of L-shaped living room/kitchen/diner. Yeah.
And the whole point of this house,
being up in the trees, is at last revealed.
Great view, great view.
And this balcony is genius.
Thank you.
OK, well, it's...moderately good genius.
But the point about the balcony for me is that it's...
it's the moment at which the building stops being a house
and becomes a treehouse,
where all those childhood stories that involve trees
suddenly come true. Yup.
And when you have either the early morning
or the evening sun in particular, it lights up that hill,
and you get layers of the view,
and that's a rare thing to get those.
It's almost like in one of those fake 3D pictures,
where you...dum dum dum. It's lovely, yeah.
This is brilliant. This is proper architecture, isn't it?
You know? Joy.
Proper architecture doesn't come cheap.
So, how are the finances?
They're not bad.
I mean, only because I'm doing it myself with one other guy,
we're about, just gone over
the £200,000 mark to get to where we are, so...
We're being very careful but we are just about on track.
So, to finish the house and keep within the £268,000 budget,
Jon has been out on the scavenge.
My other great find - I was looking for this for ages -
I wanted a sort of green to add to the greenery that's around it.
This is green, honed Cumbrian slate.
Oh, it's beautiful!
It's magnificent. This was a real find.
It looks like it's been laid somewhere before.
It has. It came from a Rolls-Royce garage.
Seriously? It did.
I tell you what, if it's good enough for Rolls-Royce...
It's good enough for my treehouse!
Is this going in your sitting room...?
Yeah, this is going in the basement
and across the whole middle floor -
everywhere's covered in this. OK.
Jon seems at home on a building site.
He is, after all, a plumber.
But he has hidden depths.
I'm going to drag him away from the site for a quick break.
His aim is to do less plumbing
and more painting in the future.
I also paint, so I see a chance for a bit of a sketch-off.
I think of you as a sort of polymath really.
You're a plumber, heating engineer, builder engineer,
artist - all these things.
Which of them are you looking forward to enjoying,
as it were, when you, when you...
Even I think, building a house is a desire to create something.
I think most people,
whether it's decorating a room, or painting a picture,
there's a desire to create,
and I just think, that's why I'm building the house,
and that's why I paint, but it would be nice to not have the stress
that goes with the building the house part.
During this drawn-out, two-year construction period,
Noreen's been keeping the family finances afloat
with her ceramics business.
But she has found time
to design tiles for their kitchen and bathroom.
I was standing washing up in the caravan
and I was surrounded by all these gorgeous native birds,
just two feet in front of me.
They were all over the place just eating and flying about,
and I thought, that's what I need to do.
So, I've started to go for the more native angle
and as soon as I did them,
they started coming out of the kiln fine,
so I think the kiln god spoke to me,
and said, "This is what you need to do."
It's just as well Noreen is happy in her work.
She's facing her third winter working in the garage.
February is devoted to cladding the building.
The top two floors are being done in native larch,
but they want to camouflage the lowest floor.
They're sampling some mirror-like stainless steel
that they hope will suggest that the rest of the building is floating.
From back here the one that is least brushed is that one. That one, yeah.
But you still get the reflection -
a sort of milky reflection of the trees and bushes
and the branches.
Maybe that's just milky enough to tell a bird, that it's...
Yeah, don't fly into it, Mr Bird. A line of dead blackbirds.
I know, yeah.
Whereas this is much softer.
That's beautiful - it's a lovely milky coating.
I think that's it.
It's very beautiful.
If Jon and Noreen want to avoid another winter
in the caravan,
they'll have to enlist the help of woodland sprites.
So, when do you think you're going to get this all ready
for final inspection?
I've got various friends that'll come and help.
I've got the guy that I normally work with,
and I've got another guy, so that's four of us on, plus a tiler.
Leading on to the answer that it will be ready for inspection...
Summer time. Summer time.
Sometime?! No, summer time!
Summer time.
Even with Jon devoting every sinew of his being
to this project, inside and out,
I still suspected that finishing within
the next few months was going to be a close call.
When I last visited, in the summer of 2016,
the thick foliage was hiding Jon and Noreen's house
from the prying eyes of downtown shoppers,
and from me - I had little idea what to expect.
This is like the ramp from ET's spaceship!
Getting closer though, I couldn't miss
the strikingly bright larch cladding,
which seemed a bit unsettled in its environment.
What's inside?
Come in and have a look!
Last time I was here, they had managed to complete
the basics, but had barely moved in.
The big open plan space for everyday living seemed quite sparse.
However, there were some bits that caught my eye.
I do like this. This is what, is it recycled?
This is iroko, out of an old science lab.
What from a chemistry lab? Yeah!
I recognise these. Yeah! What a lovely thing, to be able
to bring into a home your own work.
The view from the kitchen window was superb.
That does not look like Gloucestershire, that does look like Belize!
It does a bit, doesn't it?
I expect to see a Macaque monkey running up that tree.
Or a grey squirrel. Yeah!
Downstairs, the mirror sheen of the stainless steel
really did conjure the illusion of a floating building.
And this is your workshop?
Yes, that's going to be
my lovely workshop and studio and kiln room, yeah.
But inside, they still had so much to do.
Not as finished. Not as finished. No.
Upstairs, they'd saved money by using old school gymnasium flooring.
You can't fake the finish
because this has been polished by generations of plimsolls
and adolescent knees.
Yeah.
Hello, cat.
And you've taken it through the bedroom.
Jon and Noreen at last had their bedroom,
and they could move out of the caravan.
But there was still work to be done across all the floors.
So, when we met for the first time three years ago,
you said you wanted to spend £268,000 building this,
and that was it - there was no more.
That was it. That's right. Yes.
So how much? Have you added it up yet?
Yes. Oh, yeah.
And it is? We've spent just over that - about 270.
That's shocking!
But we haven't finished.
It has been tough. It has been tough. Really, really tough.
You just have to keep going.
All well and good,
but they'd run out of money,
so how on earth were they going to get the project finished?
Quite some time has passed since my last visit,
and I want to know if they managed to make it all work.
This project, I felt, was always one that was
running the gauntlet, you know?
It was right out there,
and that was despite Jon and Noreen's ambition,
and their clear talents,
and despite all that help they had from within the community.
And I say this, because for me it was a project of paradoxes -
of high-tech and low impact,
of high vision and, at the same time low budget,
of high rise living and high ambition.
The question is, after seven years,
have they managed to realise fully their dream
of romantic sylvan tree top life?
When I last visited Jon and Noreen in 2016,
they'd moved into the treehouse
despite it being far from complete.
I had to come back.
Well, seven years is a long time to wait, isn't it?
Goodness me.
I think the trees seem to be looking really well.
I don't know about Jon and Noreen, or even their house.
You can't see it!
Last time I was here, it didn't quite seem to fit.
The new larch cladding shouted "Look at me!
"I'm a big orange box on stilts!"
It's very different, to how it was when I last saw it.
It's silvered up. It's beautiful!
The larch now perfectly matches the bark
and branches of the trees that prosper around it.
Finally, the house seems at peace,
floating serenely,
almost unnoticed.
Hello, you two. Hi, Kevin! Nice to see you! Come on up!
I'll come up the spirally bit.
I'll follow the cat. Come on, then.
Hello! Hello, Kevin! Lovely to see you!
After all this time! How are you? Good to see you, Jon.
I'm good. Good, good! You look both unchanged.
Well, thank you!
After the trauma of building, you know,
and the house looks better for having silvered up...
It does, yep.
..and disappeared - it's hard to tell sometimes whether you're
looking at building cladding,
or looking at tree trunk, do you know what I mean?
Yes, it's settled in nicely -
it's shimmied into the landscape.
Absolutely. Yeah. And this is... What is this?
This is larch again. Oh, this is larch!
This is all larch, the same timber.
The same timber horizontally, vertically...
The deck looks really inhabited now. There was nothing here before!
Yeah, that's actually sheep fencing.
It does the job and was a cost effective way of stopping us dying.
It's really nice, I like it. There's planting, there's...
You've also done the garden beautifully too.
Yes. And the trees themselves, how are they doing?
Fabulous. Yep. They've really, really held up well.
They're looking magnificent.
We spend most of our summer out here when it's good weather.
It's sort of the way to live.
Yeah. Breakfast on the balcony, lunch on the balcony,
dinner on the balcony.
Great, how's the inside? Looking good, come on in.
I would love to see it, I really would.
Ah!
It's glorious.
The main living space is looking more inviting,
finally fully finished and beautifully detailed.
It's worked really well.
I think...we're really pleased, aren't we?
And it's beautiful.
I'm guessing that some of these things are from your previous home?
Yes, yes!
We kept the things that fitted and worked the best,
and we've just gradually built it up over the years.
This is, this is reclaimed? Cumbrian green slate.
It was from a Rolls-Royce garage.
Rolls-Royce taste, yeah?
But not the cost! Reliant Robin budget!
Yeah, exactly! Our budget was always tight,
so you just have to use your ingenuity and, you know,
come up with ideas.
It's cool, and it's cool. It's lovely inside.
You've got, of course, all that greenery to keep the sun out
and keep it variegated. In winter, of course,
leaves fall off the trees and you get direct sunshine in.
Exactly, yeah. Sheds leaves, so the trees are benefitting us
summer and winter.
And the overhangs make such a difference
because, as you can see,
the sun isn't actually entering the room at this time of year.
And the kitchen is as beautiful as I remember it.
We added the island.
Yeah, that was a few offcuts we had left over.
Yeah. And you have the added benefit of this beautiful slot window -
the view's slightly changed.
Just a little bit!
In fairness, we did know... Well, the planning was in
when we bought this section of land. It is progress.
Oh, I like the fact you come up into the light from the darker hallway.
Upstairs, the views are unspoiled.
All three bedrooms are now finished and have bathrooms,
decorated with Noreen's tiles.
Very nice!
There's a dedicated space for Jon's art.
To be able to look at that view and paint, doesn't get much better.
Yeah. Beautiful.
And I think having a dedicated space really does help, doesn't it?
It does. You're so much more productive.
The building has enabled us to continue and hopefully improve.
In the silver box at the bottom of the house,
the studio and kiln room are also finished.
Noreen has a whole floor dedicated to her ceramic work.
Wow, this is lovely!
It's like a watercolour almost, you know? Thank you.
The previous space wasn't quite conducive to creative inspiration.
To my surprise, out in the garden,
there's yet more living space.
They've turned their old basic accommodation
into a guest annex -
somewhere complimentary to the main house,
that can generate some rental income.
Do you know what? I mean, the timber's silvered,
but the actual metal work is still as pristine.
I do like that stainless steel.
It has held up well.
I think it's great because it does contribute to the sense of
the building floating, doesn't it?
And picks up the reflection of the trees,
which is what it was designed to do.
There was always that concern about how well these trees would respond
to the intervention of putting a house here. Yeah.
All the greenery appears to be fresh and lively. Yes.
Yep. The trees around it are thriving,
unlike a lot of the ash trees, which are doing the opposite.
We have had a little bit of ash dieback.
This one here, you can see is dying back -
we've had to take a little bit off that.
This was another example which we just pollarded,
and it's coming back to life.
We bought some special medicine for the trees to put on their roots.
This is important because what you're doing is treating your
population as a sort of an experiment.
We're in the lucky position where we can give it a go -
we can try different approaches that might work.
So, what have you planted here?
Lots of ferns. We've got some azaleas.
Oh, nearly 100 yews, I think, and all the fruit trees.
All the fruit trees. Yeah.
Well, it's fair to say your approach is one of sort of
woodland management, rather than gardening.
Some people might say it's messy,
but I think it's a case of a light touch.
Yeah, exactly.
If you want to encourage biodiversity,
you have to let everything find their balance.
We were both really passionate right from the start
that we wanted to prove that we could build a house
and actually increase the wildlife, and I'm pretty sure we've done that.
I'm pretty confident we've done that.
There's more wildlife here than when we came,
and I think surely that can only be a good thing.
And all this transformation within
half an acre of woodland, but at what financial cost?
So, how much did you spend on it in the end then?
I think we started off with 268,
and we'd got to 270 when we saw you last,
but we hadn't finished. Yeah.
So what are you in for now? We're just over 300.
Literally just over. £300,000.
For how many square metres? 220.
Yeah! Wow.
So that's about £1,300 a square metre or something?
Yes. Which is extremely good.
And do you have a mortgage?
No, luckily we don't. That was the plan. You're very lucky.
And that's why we kept cutting back.
If something overran, we cut back on something else.
Firm criteria, that we had to come out mortgage-free. Yeah.
So, I mean the combination of your expediency,
the desire to recycle and reinvent,
and doing so much yourselves and with friends
in the community where you had grown up, therefore that was possible,
all these things point to massive savings.
Congratulations. It's beautifully, seamlessly kind of integrated.
You know, there's a sense that it's just... It's all meant to be here.
I mean, we're incredibly grateful
probably every day.
And full of love for the area, the house,
what it's given us, what we've hopefully given back.
We are unbelievably lucky. Yeah.
The timing was key, and seizing opportunity.
I think, I am glad we took the risk.
It was a bit nerve-racking but, yeah, it was a good risk.
And with the greatest risks come the greatest rewards.
If they had not been willing to take chances
on the unusual, they would be settling for the ordinary.
This house is so far from that.
Well, I think we can agree
this was an experimental project.
I mean, would you go out and buy a piece of land
without planning permission?
Would you invest in experimental ground anchors
with no concrete?
No. I didn't think so either!
And yet for Jon and Noreen, it was their bread and butter,
to make these changes, to take these leaps of faith.
And do you know, the biggest experiment of all
that's taken place over these last seven years,
has happened out here.
It's the experiment where they took the site,
developed it, built on it, and in so doing,
did not trash the place,
but instead enhanced the biodiversity.
They built a dwelling for human species to live in,
and in so doing, created an environment
for many, many other species to thrive out here.
How amazing is that?
You know, when we build treehouses for children,
we hope they're somehow going to engage with nature,
that they're going to become closer to their natural environment,
look what happens when grown-ups do that.
So, what have you bought? Two garages?
Yep. Two garages and a little bit of land around it.
I do totally trust him.
I have to.
The important thing is that we don't find anything grizzly under there.
So, it's a big square hole, with a big lump in it?
Yes. It's a hole in the ground where we will be living.
Everything that pushes the end date back costs us money.
If we don't believe in it, this whole thing could just collapse.
Tell me, has it put you off?
Would you ever do such a thing?