This programme contains strong language
Location...location is, we're told, the one important thing
when we come to buy a house or look for a site.
I mean who will be so foolhardy as to choose
a tiny sliver of land between a mainline London railway
and this busy A road in Sussex, eh?
That's exactly, however, what one couple decided to buy.
I first met them three and a half years ago,
and I remember thinking at the time,
"Boy, this pair are courageous, inspiring,
"and absolutely rebellious."
Olaf and Fritha had lofty ambitions
for their tricky plot...
This is just our dream. We can do whatever we want here.
..until they discovered it had a sewer running underneath it.
We're stuck with it.
We've paid the money so we're kind of screwed.
A triangular self-build was the only solution.
Yeah, I mean it's a pain in the arse because it's a triangle.
So Olaf's master-carpenter skills were tested like never before.
Shit. Can't fit that window in.
And if that weren't enough.
There's two lines. Ah, ha-ha!
Olaf and Fritha were also starting a new family.
Just want it all over and we can move into our house.
Inevitably, building a triangular house led to
a load of head-scratching problems.
A number of the windows,
the handles have been milled on the wrong side.
What's this all about, you know?
And as money became ever more scarce...
We will be in a situation where we need to beg and borrow more.
..a spur-of-the-moment purchase of a double decker bus...
Why are you putting a bus next to the house?
..threatened to push them over the edge.
Stop. Oh, Christ, what have I done? Shit.
I am really intrigued to find out whether or not Olaf
and Fritha's triangular life on that little plot that nobody else wanted
has worked out for them.
But first, here's their story.
There are some people in this world that don't follow
the well-worn path of convention.
Rebellious spirits that embrace the unorthodox...
..and resist the pressure to conform.
People like Fritha and Olaf.
I met Olaf on Tinder.
I thought I can't swipe right because he looks too wild
and I promised my dad I would have no more wild boyfriends,
but then by the third date I was totally, like, head over heels.
My life before Fritha was a little bit,
little bit, er, little bit hectic, yeah.
She's different from any other person I've ever met.
Pretty much knew from the outset that we were going to be together.
We really want to live a different kind of life.
We don't want to follow
the patterns of others and things like that.
She does make me laugh a lot.
Fritha runs an ethical business
importing hand-stitched fabrics from India.
While Olaf, named after his Icelandic ancestors,
is a carpenter, joiner and crafter of precise high-end interiors.
Now he wants to use those skills to build an entire house...
..on this quarter acre site
in West Sussex that they bought for £160,000.
Oh, look a train.
He waved at me.
This compact piece of land is far from ideal,
it's hemmed in between a really busy A road and a mainline railway.
There are so many trains.
The decibels on this site would deter most,
but Fritha and Olaf only discovered the biggest obstacle
to building here after they'd bought it.
When I found out about the sewer it was a bit demoralising.
The sewer has dictated the shape of the building.
Seeing as it's impossible to move,
we've had to work with it. We're stuck with it,
we've paid the money so we're kind of screwed.
There has to be a 3 metre distance between the sewer line
and any foundations,
so the buildable area on this scrap of land, has been halved.
People walk past it all the time when we're on the land,
they call over and they say, "Hey, do you realise that you've
"bought a plot of land that you actually can't build on,
"there's like a main sewer in the middle of that." We're like,
"Yeah we know we did that, we know."
In early 2020, Fritha and Olaf begin clearing the site...
Not on the survey.
..and uncover even more underground surprises.
Like a defunct septic tank.
But there's no turning back now.
Probably been thinking about building my own house
all the time I've been a carpenter, so 20 plus years.
So now you need to say is,
"I would never be building this house if I hadn't met Fritha."
Look at me, gazing, lovingly.
I definitely wouldn't be in this situation if I hadn't met Fritha.
You make sure that's in there. I'll pay you.
Olaf has now begun building
a boundary wall from old railway sleepers.
A brazen, chunky line of defence to resist the adversity on every front.
That is, apart from the sewer running directly underneath
the plot, which is forcing them to build a triangular house.
There's one thing I don't like about
triangular buildings and that's this problem.
The fact that you get these corner spaces which are useless.
Look, what's it good for?
It's good for standing in.
The naughty corner.
It's the useless corner.
The prospects for this project are grim, frankly,
maybe that's why Olaf and Fritha drive around in an ambulance.
Oh, look it's our plucky self-builders.
I like your van.
So you're next to a road, next to a railway.
Yep. I can see why somebody would
look at this site and think actually it's challenging.
The biggest challenge is the sewer.
A huge nine-inch main sewer that runs right the way through the site.
Presumably that means that you can't build over it?
No. What you're saying is the house is as big as it can be on the site,
because of the... Couldn't be larger. Exactly that, yeah.
Man alive. Are you going to build this yourself?
Predominately, yes.
So although the house is constrained, there's no constrain on
the craftsmanship that's going into it, the energy that's going into it.
No compromise. No compromise. No compromise at all.
We've both lived in rentals all our lives,
we only met three years ago, this is just our dream,
we can...we can do whatever we want here.
Of course, they can't do whatever they want
because all they have are restrictions.
The road,
the trainline
and the main sewer,
which alone threatens the viability of their plans.
The three metre exclusion zone
and the need for their own soakaway means
the foundations utilise every inch of buildable space.
On top, they'll build a meaty hand-crafted timber frame
that'll support two upper floors
poured in concrete.
These heavy floors,
thick insulation,
and 21 triple glazed windows
will work to keep the noise
and the vibrations of the heavy
traffic out of the interior.
An eye-catching sculptural, sloping roof
at the front will be clad in zinc
and then covered in cutting edge,
low profile solar panels.
Inside, the house won't be big.
The ground floor will house an open
kitchen and a triangular snug.
An acutely angled first floor will
squeeze in a study,
bathroom and two bedrooms.
Upstairs, in the sloping eaves,
the main bedroom with
a large bathroom will become Olaf
and Fritha's treetop haven.
The building will be clad in white render,
black engineering bricks
and Olaf's favourite - wood.
Olaf plans an outdoor kitchen,
and a sunken circular fire pit.
This is an unconventional house,
on an unforgiving plot.
To build it will not be easy,
so their budget had better not be
as constrained as the site.
So how good are you both with cash, with money, you know?
Have you drawn up spreadsheets and
cash flow forecasts for the project?
BOTH: Er, no.
No.
How much are you spending on the project? Hundred and...?
It's 190 is the mortgage.
190,000.
So that's a mortgage you've got there?
Self-build mortgage. Self-build mortgage.
So how much have you spent so far? 20, 30 grand?
We're knocking on the door of 100 at the moment.
Good.... What, that you've spent?
But that's, that we've spent, yeah.
That's including getting out of the ground with
the concrete and everything.
And the windows are paid for. Windows and doors, OK.
Well, how much were the windows?
37?
37? Mm.
And that includes the front door.
OK, that's good.
But you've spent 60,000. Er...
Foundations like this should cost about 20, 30 tops.
You've spent double that.
Making this land buildable has cost us
a fortune that we didn't realise that it was going to cost us.
And that leaves you with 90,000, to finish the house, everything.
You can do it, Olaf.
Well, he's going to have to.
Wow. This budgetary revelation is yet another giant hurdle for
a project besieged by compromise.
This magnificent, great powerful sleeper wall is beautiful
and it's finished, whereas this lightweight timber stud work that
Olaf started is...is weedy.
This wall actually speaks of craftsmanship and skill.
This one, well, it's all to play for here, isn't it?
And going forward,
I just hope that all
the qualities of this somehow magically transfer to
the work Olaf has to do,
because everything falls onto his shoulders,
everything is his responsibility.
It is, in every way, down to him.
Fritha and Olaf want to finish this unlikely house in just 12 months,
so Olaf and a trusted colleague
don't waste any time in getting started.
I'm in my element here, I mean, you know,
it's what I was born to do, I think.
I have "go mode" and that's it. I don't have a sort of half speed.
Of course, it's not long before
those spikey angles make themselves felt.
Shit. I can't fit that window in.
Pretty pissed off.
This pitch on the forward roof is
one of the steepest angles on the building.
I was two degrees out,
two degrees out doesn't seem much but it's about,
about that much missing out of the top floor.
Yeah, I mean it's a pain in the arse because it's a triangle.
One tiny error in degree will now
mean several hours of reworking part of the roof.
My brain hurts.
And on this build every moment is critical.
I've got the bricklayer starting in August
so he's four weeks away, I think,
three and a half weeks away
and I go back to my paid job in September.
As Olaf races to get the timber frame up
in just four weeks...
..Fritha heads to their allotment - a short walk from the site.
I love the allotment very much.
It was my idea to get the allotment before we got planning
because I felt that we needed something to get us over here.
Building a house is just one part of Fritha
and Olaf's brave new world - they also want to start a family.
I hope that this place provides the opportunity
for some of our children, whoever they might be,
to get more into country living.
Fritha and Olaf have been trying
for a child for over two years.
They're currently staying at Fritha's parents
in Guildford, 20 miles away... Have you got a lighter?
..and they've turned to IVF.
The first important step of that journey begins tomorrow.
This is what we've been working,
working for, for two years basically.
We had one pregnancy and it ended up in miscarriage.
Building a house, you can control it to a certain degree,
but this is completely uncontrollable so there is
an air of uncertainty
that is quite daunting, really.
Early the next morning Fritha and Olaf are in London.
So, today we're going for egg harvesting.
Yeah. We're going to go and get five juicy eggs out.
It's just, just one step at a time, I think.
These two aren't just taking on the stress of building a house,
they're actively pushing for new responsibility
and whatever the outcome,
they both know that great change is coming.
See you on the flip side.
The strain and the pains of building are already being felt by Fritha
and Olaf in West Sussex.
Their house is a tiny, complex, triangular puzzle.
There's so much stress involved in building this house.
It's quite all-consuming,
project managing and building at the same time.
As well as a house, they also want to make a family.
It seems the IVF process has worked so far.
So we've got five embryos fertilised which is really, really exciting.
Their lives are moving like whirlwinds
with only one impediment
in the path of their pursuit of happiness - money.
There was quite a tremendous overspend on the groundworks.
You know, it was unforeseen circumstances.
It's going to go over probably by about 50 grand.
We'll run out of money and then we will be in a situation
where we need to beg and borrow more.
A new £240,000 budget will mean going back to the bank
to ask for a larger mortgage.
But the mathematics of the budget are simple compared to
the geometrical riddle of the house itself.
Olaf's next challenge is the frame for his trianguloid roof.
Bit tricky, um, some very technical compound angles
and, um, not really looking forward to doing it
but, um, it's part of the process, I guess.
As the roof goes up,
it becomes clear why most of us live in cubes.
For Olaf, even the drawings stop making sense.
On the one side of the roof, it says on the top,
it's a 31 degree pitch.
So what... I don't understand the 18 from vertical.
Why would you have that? That's what I'm up against.
Mind-boggling geometry slows down the work.
Olaf has to slave every hour God sends.
But after four weeks, his great skill and experience triumph.
The roof has been a bit of a pig but it's,
we've done the majority of it now.
It's looking good, I think.
Aaargh.
Their hopes for a child have also progressed and Fritha's now on site
to see if their IVF treatment has worked.
OK I'm going to go in the loo and do the pregnancy test
and I'll give it to you, OK? OK, right.
Fingers crossed.
Often, our fates are sealed in single moments.
But rarely in a Portaloo.
I don't know. I guess that's long enough.
That's two? There's two lines.
Ah, ha-ha!
Is this big enough?
Getting a positive pregnancy test now is huge for us.
Yeah, I think this test does hammer home the necessity for this house.
It's definitely going to concentrate the mind a little bit more.
And so it should.
By the following month,
the metal rib deck for the heavy concrete floors goes down
and the spaces inside are becoming enclosed.
This building's enforced oddity has never been clearer.
Wow. It's cool, isn't it?
Hello.
Hi, welcome back.
This is extraordinary, guys.
Olaf, it's a house.
I didn't think you'd be anywhere
near as advanced as this in six weeks.
I know, it's amazing. You know? We're really hammering on.
The frame is crisp and strong
but also completely nuts.
Every building has compromise.
It's impossible to build without compromise. Really?
You know, you could argue that actually the triangular shape of
the building is a compromise in plan. Absolutely.
Because it's constrained by the site.
Surely you must be prepared to accept a degree of behind
the scenes bodging in a building?
I'm not prepared to bodge anything, no.
Where was the crunch point in the building if any?
That, that bloody top corner.
Oh, it was that bad you refer to it as the bloody top corner.
I actually made a model of it so I could sit there
and get my head around the whole thing.
This full-scale model of where
the building's largest triangles
converge took seven hours to make
and it's a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a perfectionist.
To get them to meet in the right place was kind of trial and error.
I definitely didn't think that that was
going to be as difficult as it turned out to be.
The word is integrity.
Absolutely. And it's important to get this done, isn't it?
I mean, you have a deadline.
Yes, we do, we do.
So our IVF process has been successful.
It's very early days, but we're just remaining really positive.
Olaf has created an implausible modern shell
for this family home,
but he's used the most simple and ancient methods to get here.
You would think, wouldn't you, that to produce a building full
of such extraordinary angles as this
on every surface including the roof,
that you would need a sheaf of drawings and that architects and
engineers would have spent months preparing detailed analyses
of every junction.
But no, because instead Olaf uses things like this,
three pieces of wood screwed together forming
a jig which he can slide over every joist end
to cut it in an angle in that plane
but also in that plane.
He doesn't need a computer to help him design this building,
he hardly needs a pencil.
The timber frame of this pointy palace may be complete...
..but Olaf has now had to return to
a paid job he'd committed himself to,
so every moment on site is precious.
Yeah, I don't think you need a stop bead...
Oh, on the back, yeah, you will need a stop bead on the back.
Now, as well as running out of money...
Cheers, mate. ..Olaf is having to trust
the subbies he leaves on site like Mark the bricklayer,
who he's known for over 15 years.
I always knew the design would be,
would be quite intricate.
It's very Olaf.
Very Olaf means very tricky,
heavy blockwork with precise angles and lots of extreme cuts.
To get that many bricks to do the job,
took me one day just to cut all those to hide this steel.
Yeah, it's been, yeah, quite labour intensive.
It's extremely important for me
to have friends here that understand me,
understand my needs, and I get on with.
The zinc roof is also being fitted
by someone Olaf has worked with before.
Um, Francois is basically a genius when it comes to metal work.
So, how many panels have we got, then?
I don't know. THEY CHUCKLE
By October, there is still no news about the mortgage
and funds are dwindling.
Although Francois and his team have
begun fitting the expensive zinc roof.
And do you want to put a gutter here? Yeah.
When he's not at work, Olaf has been insulating,
not just to keep this house warm,
but more importantly - silent.
Because of the railway, because of the road,
sound needs to get eradicated.
The amount of material
and different types of materials in
the actual make-up of the wall is
going to pretty much annihilate any kind of sound coming through.
Olaf's belt and braces approach to sound proofing will make some
of these walls almost half a metre thick.
Of course, that's no guarantee his plan will actually work.
He's relying on mountains of different insulation
and the insulating strength of his triple glazed windows.
One, two, three.
Tens of thousands of pounds' worth of glass has now arrived
and it's being installed by Olaf's sub-contractor
but there's a problem,
and it's got nothing to do with sound proofing.
There is a hiccup.
A number of the windows,
the handles have been milled on the wrong side.
What's this all about, you know?
Ridiculous. When I saw the windows were opening the wrong way
and that all the handles were wrong, then I, yeah, I lost it a bit.
Out of the 17 windows,
nine of them are on the wrong side.
Impossible to live with.
One, two, three.
Olaf's a perfectionist.
The windows have to be right.
And that could be expensive.
Three dimensional triangular volumes
are not the easiest to create,
something Fritha and Olaf are quickly discovering.
It is all-consuming, you wake up in the middle of the night
and you end up, you know, deconstructing a roof,
in, you know, in your brain.
Financial pressure is mounting, too.
The extravagant zinc roof is costing 25 grand
and the window problem is unresolved.
Yeah, it does take it out of you,
you know, physically and mentally.
I think if we had money I'd sleep.
I'm sure rich people sleep well at night, don't they?
If the bank don't agree the new mortgage of 240,000 very soon,
this project will have to completely stop.
And then, of course, there's always the odd bout
of torrential weather to slow things down.
Look, the roofers are at work.
Outside may be damp,
but inside is wonderfully dry and it seems to have grown.
Oh, my word, full height.
That's beautiful.
This is exciting because I haven't been up here.
Triangular study, little bit of a landing going on here
and then there's bedrooms.
So, these windows are super high performing,
triple glazed, and this one opens...
I mean, quite clearly, the wrong way.
You want it to open into that void there,
you don't want to have to, kind of, walk around it,
it kind of makes this entire corner of the room useless...
..which is a shame.
Olaf has gone back to the company responsible
for designing the windows
and it's clear that there's been
a miscommunication about the specifications.
Now the company are willing to have
a discussion about putting things right.
Have the windows been the biggest issue for you?
Yeah, the windows have been the biggest issue
and it's been fairly stressful, as well. So where are you now, then?
They're willing to change the sashes.
So you've got a result?
Yeah. We don't have to stop the job,
we can change them after we've moved in.
Olaf's happy that the handles problem is resolved
and there's even more good news.
We've just had an acceptance for an extension on the mortgage.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah, so I think we've got it covered now.
Good. That's going to kit you out, as well. It's going to give you
furniture and fitted stuff and the whole thing, which you need in a
building like this because you can't expect to buy a wardrobe
from a shop in the high street.
Not this shape, no. Not this shape.
I want to make the kitchen from scratch and,
yeah, we'll see how it all pans out. Nice.
Their new mortgage must be a huge relief.
It means Olaf can now focus on
delivering some of his precise, high quality joinery.
By winter, the render is on,
and the sculptural zinc roof is finished,
and has some extremely stylish low profile solar panels attached.
The whole system was six grand.
It's about 30% more expensive than a standard array,
but they're hardly noticeable on this kind of roof.
Beautiful.
The promise of greater things to come,
all of which are now again
in the hands of Olaf who's back on-site full-time.
Clearly this is a man happy in his work.
And a happy Olaf is a happy Fritha.
I just never, ever thought I'd ever
have a bedroom like this in my whole life.
This is like a hotel.
There's going to be a sofa, beer fridge,
we're going to have a great time up here.
Damn right.
In the new year, with a baby due in six weeks,
work accelerates.
The interiors are plastered
and Olaf has turned his attention to
the external timber cladding.
He wants the timber to merge into the blockwork
but once again, those acute angles aren't making life easy.
The reason why this is a bit tricky,
is it double backs at an angle less than 41 which is tricky to cut
and we just want to make sure
it looks absolutely spot-on and nice and crisp.
Shaping just three fragile larch boards
to form a perfect sharp edge...
There's another piece needed there.
..takes most of a day.
Attention to detail is what I do.
I've made a nice niche career out of it so far.
This building has charted Olaf's progress from carpenter
to master craftsman.
That's how you do it.
Even the short winter days... Night-time carpentry.
..can't halt his devotion to this project.
You go the extra length on your own home, I think.
Have to see what it looks like in the daylight, though.
Olaf's genius is becoming evident all over this house.
From the finely cut cladding to
the timber tiles made from offcuts,
even his driveway is an exquisite layout of concrete blocks.
So, Olaf's getting to that exciting bit in
the project where he's putting the cladding on,
he's dressing the building
and he needs one beautiful, tiny detail
on the front of that house to complete it.
I wonder what it is?
Just tell me,
why are you putting a bus next to the house?
Well, it overcomes the problem of not being able
to build a workshop because of the sewer.
Expensive? 2,600.
Drunken eBay purchase.
People walking by, walking their dogs will go,
"I was hoping to see some exquisite pointing
"or some beautiful larch cladding,
"but no, instead what I'm looking at is the side of a plastic bus."
It's going to be really urban-meets-rural,
meets really nice triangular house.
But what's so sad is we spent so much money on the front door
and now, you know, you're really not going to see much of the front door!
That's kind of my point, really.
But how the hell are you going to get it into place?
Because you've got nowhere to... Are you going to crane it in?
How are you going to do it? Not sure yet.
This thing has to go onto the drive,
so we will have to make it work. We'll work it.
Yeah.
It's going to look fantastic.
It looks like it belongs on a concrete ring road, this bus.
It's not glamorous.
Olaf still needs to get his site bus-ready,
alongside a few other jobs.
The driveway's still not complete,
then I've got the fencing to do outside,
the rendering and the decking.
In here is all the floors, all the second fix,
and then the final finish, including the kitchen.
It's extremely overwhelming.
I so admire this man
for building this home almost by himself,
but there is one welcome distraction.
When you first hold your baby, it's this amazing thing.
Kiss.
Love you. You can't stop looking at her.
Hundred percent, life-changing moment.
I just want it all over and we can move into our house.
As Fritha and Olaf come to terms with being parents,
another important arrival is speeding its way into their lives.
Slightly shitting myself about the bus arriving.
The whole thing's an unknown as to how it's going to go.
It could go absolutely smoothly, it could be disastrous.
Probably cause a traffic jam.
It's a tight space to get a bloody great bus in.
But it's too late for second thoughts.
The bus is making its first pass past site.
I feel like I want to puke.
Jesus Christ,
just watching it come over the bridge it's like, "Oh, my God."
I might just get Niamh to move her car forward a bit.
Shit, it's right there.
Olaf has to stop the traffic on one of the major A-roads through Sussex
just to manoeuvre this huge hunk of junk into position.
And it's not happening smoothly.
What's he doing now?
Just to watch the post, I'm going to get a bit of a lock on.
OK, all right. Yeah, it's going to have to be tight.
Shit.
Oh, no. It's not going to go, is it?
Going to take the fence out. Is it going to hit my van?
The build-up of traffic...
Jesus Christ.
..makes for an unwelcome gallery of spectators.
HE SIGHS I don't know what's going on.
All the effort and craftsmanship that Olaf's put into this house...
Shit. ..could all be undone...
So much traffic is going to be backed up right now.
..by a drunken late-night spur-of-the-moment internet purchase.
Stop!
Oh, Christ.
What have I done?
Shit. HE SIGHS
It felt like disaster had struck.
But, miraculously, two months later, the last time I visited,
the bus had made it onto site,
and I was dumbfounded by Olaf and Fritha's transformation
of this piece of land that no-one else had wanted.
Oh, goodness me.
That is looking acutely sharp.
The zinc-clad roof was exquisite,
puncturing the brilliant blockwork drive.
As was the cladding,
a combination of larch and humble engineering bricks.
Every inch, so well crafted.
But Olaf and Fritha had only just moved in
and were understandably exhausted.
We're in, yeah. You're living here?
We're living here. We're living here.
And not just by 15 months of construction.
This is Lagertha. Yeah, this is. How are you, baby?
Inside, Olaf had set about carving out interiors from
the home's peculiar shape.
Oh, beautiful!
Lagertha's room. That is so charming.
But there was a tonne of joinery for Olaf yet to complete.
Unrealised also, was the transformation of the
double-decker bus into his carpentry workshop,
another marathon project.
It's been twoand a half years since I last saw Olaf
and Fritha and their new baby, Lala,
as they were just moving into their pointy house,
which was, of course, unfinished at the time.
And there was a world to come of craftsmanship,
of care and dedication to making that beautiful interior
that Olaf wanted to construct so much,
that world of nurture and of love.
And completely different, of course, to the world outside.
And I'm very curious to know how they managed to
forge their new life, surrounded as they are
by trains and cars and lorries.
It's almost twoand a half years since I visited Olaf
and Fritha's landmark home on their tricky plot in West Sussex,
betwixt trains and traffic.
So, does it still deliver that jolt
of architectural adrenaline that knocked my socks off last time?
Lots of work, looks like a little shed or something.
Oh, the house is good!
It's still as sharp as ever.
You know, it packs such a punch.
There's so much energy in this building
and it hasn't dissipated.
Oh, there's the red bus!
Yeah, there, you see, I'd forgotten about that.
That was always going to be Olaf's workshop, wasn't it?
Mm! And clearly, he's using it,
because there are piles of timber everywhere.
The canny, creative reinvention
of this once unlovable site never ceases to amaze me.
But what of the transformation of the lives of the family within,
Olaf, Fritha and Lagertha, now nicknamed Lala?
Oh, hi! How are you?
Very well. Great to see you again.
And you! After all this time. Very good to see you.
It's really, really good. Absolutely amazing.
And how have you been over these last two years?
Busy. Very busy.
You were doing all this site work which was, you know, heavy duty.
But now, I mean, I get glimpses...
Its only just coming into fruition now, the bus.
So, I'm still on site.
But slowly taking on more work to make use of the bus.
Nice, nice. I almost forget,
because I get so excited by this building,
I almost forget there's a road there.
You can hear the traffic on it. I mean, how's it been?
We forget. You don't notice it?
No, just oblivious to it. And the trains?
The trains we love.
Lala just says, "Train, train!"
You know, this whole project was about the kind of taking of
an unusable thing, you know, and crafting from those circumstances
something beautiful, something unusual.
If the road hadn't been there, we wouldn't have had
a plot that we could afford, let's face it.
Yeah. Come on in. Great.
So, just how effective is this super-insulated home
at cutting out all the commotion outside?
I love this door, it's like sort of Passivhaus standard, isn't it?
All these seals. And...soundproofing?
I mean, it's good, yeah? It is very good.
Try it.
It's like the outside world has gone.
Open the door again and see.
Hang on, I'll open the door.
Oh, what's that?
A great rumble of something!
That sounds like an aircraft going over.
Motorbikes are the most, the loudest. Its extraordinary.
It's also quite warm. It's lovely and warm.
You can lose a layer or two.
I might have to. I feel at home.
Ooh! Ahh, it's good, that kitchen.
They painted each set of door fronts with
a different Pantone sample pot to save money.
Its lovely and sleek.
And this is, I'm assuming,
I mean, these shelves here, all you?
So, he's made the table, all the shelves,
the shelves in all our bathrooms,
everything is made from one tree.
So, the table is beautiful.
When you get baked beans down here,
you can't get the baked beans or ketchup out,
so unfortunately, we're going to have to cut all
the pretty bark off. It's got to go.
We'll still keep the wany edge. But lose the bark.
I like the fact that it's getting oiled just through use
with things like... Butter and sausages.
Olive oil. Yeah, exactly.
What do you call this room?
We call it the snug. Right.
That corner is really super pointy, so what do you put in that,
and the answer is you put in something circular,
you put in the wood burner which just fills the gap.
Warms the house. The MVHR helps to move
the heat around the house as well.
So the MVHR, mechanical ventilation,
that's taking the heat and blowing it to all the bedrooms and...
Yeah, warming rest of house.
I've never seen that before.
That's...that's clever.
What's the point of the hole,
the window between the two rooms?
Well, it's actually a mirror that comes up,
so it can either be open plan or enclosed space. Wha...?
It comes up? How?
Just press the button.
GENTLE MECHANICAL WHIRRING
At the speed of...
..a glacier.
If you want to look at yourself before you're going out,
you know, you can do that in three weeks. It's taking forever!
Olaf's very sensitive about the speed of it. I don't care!
It couldn't have gone any faster!
It's a bit more Austin Powers than James Bond, I'm afraid, but...
But all this is mere detail.
The living spaces here provide valuable sanctuary
for Olaf, Fritha, and young Lala,
spaces that transcend and defy the noisy surroundings,
even in the garden, which has a bar,
a fire pit and lots of space for family and friends.
Meanwhile, upstairs,
Olaf has been busy carving beautiful furniture...
Wow.
..not least in the main bedroom on the top floor.
This is you, presumably, Olaf.
This is a magnificent bedhead,
magnificent piece of tree.
Yeah, and he put these sleepers on as well for the base of the bed. Oh!
There's still a couple of bits to do in here.
Like, I want to do some proper bedside tables. Yeah.
And there's a big lump of ash that's going to be
a lovely sort of shelf behind the bath,
to actually put a beer on, instead of trying to find a...
In the bath? Nice.
I mean, is this because you can't stop?
I would like to stop one day,
but I see things that need to be done,
and I'll just keep going. Yeah.
On the floor below,
an office has become a bedroom
and other rooms have changed too,
so there are now three bedrooms squeezed in here.
This was Lala's room, wasn't it? It was Lagertha's room, yeah.
Yeah. So now it's what?
This is for a child we don't know the name of yet
because we're foster carers
and we're waiting to be matched with two new children.
Wow! We got through it. Good for you.
So, you're going to have three kids?
Yes. Oh, my goodness me. A proper houseful.
I mean, you'd be really making use of the building.
I think it's staggering that you've got those reserves.
It feels weird having two massive empty rooms.
It's really interesting you say that
because I didn't think this house would be too big at all. Yeah.
I thought it would be constricting because it's small,
you had to go small because of the site, the sewer...
You know, so many constraints here
and actually you've ended up with a building, thanks partly
to going up, that's given you so much space.
If it's just me Olaf and Lala here for
the rest of our lives it would feel empty and a waste,
so we want a big family and we want to fill this place.
Use it. Yeah. Share it. Share it.
Amazing that you're doing this, I think it's admirable.
This site is now so accommodating,
readying itself for a burgeoning family.
While outside, on top of that peskily positioned sewage pipe,
the red bus has finally been inventively reborn as
Olaf's carpentry workshop.
Oh, yes!
Fully kitted. Blimey, actually it is.
You've got everything you need.
They're big spaces aren't they, these?
Yeah. Surprisingly so, yeah.
Yeah, pillar drill, chop saws, planers.
I've never had a fully kitted workshop like this.
Dedicated tools for dedicated jobs in a dedicated space.
Dedicated to one man.
Dedicated to this. Yeah!
And so, the stuff you're planning to make is not going to be
as heavy, I guess. Definitely not, no.
Not as massive, not as...
Just a little bit more intricate and, yeah, manageable.
I just hope that I'm able to create stuff that's unique
and inspire other people.
And the house I suppose, in a way, is really a giant version of that.
Yeah, we're shrinking everything down now. Yeah, yeah!
So do you think it's still like a hunk of junk or,
improved hunk of junk?
It was a hunk of junk
and now it is the most brilliant workshop.
It's eccentric but it's...yeah.
Just wait till you see upstairs. What, here?
I'd forgotten, it's a double-decker bus!
Oh, this is miraculous.
The upper deck is transformed into a design space with a lounge.
This is not the floor of the original bus, surely, no?
Three months of hard labour. My word.
Leftovers, is it?
Its all the leftovers of life, yeah.
Jobs I've been on all my whole life.
I think its magical.
This house is enabling Olaf and I to live out both our dreams.
Like, I've always dreamed of being a foster carer
and Olaf's always dreamed of having his own workshop
so he can do his own work.
And this house has enabled us to live out both of those dreams.
Yeah, yeah.
Olaf and Fritha seem to have built a house
and a life without compromise
from a plot that, not long ago, was all compromise.
I take my hard hat off to these two.
The ride here has been by bus,
and it's been by ambulance,
and it's been by pointy building,
has been kind of a bit wild, hasn't it?
Or is all of life like that for you two?
It's definitely fast-paced with Fritha around.
You just manage to cram a lot in to your lives.
We do, yeah. We don't really stop.
I'm curious to know what people have said.
The house is so exposed, so obvious when you drive past it,
that you must have had lots of people just stop and,
you know, and talk to you about it.
I think generally people, you know,
they understand why we had to build what we built
and then they appreciate the fact that
the design went beyond just the triangle,
and, you know, and created something unique.
You know, just this last week I'm being asked to look at
a triangular plot in somewhere in the mid-west of America.
Amazing.
And we are so privileged to have this setting to just flourish in.
You seem to have achieved so much on so little
that it's sort of almost entirely about the making,
and the doing and the crafting.
That I find really magical, really.
Yeah, well, I mean if you can do that, then you can do anything.
When I first met Olaf and Fritha,
I thought of them as children of innocence,
festival-goers, free spirits on the planet,
doing their thing.
See how far they've come.
You know, there are some people on this planet,
I mean, people like Olaf and Fritha, actually,
who seem imbued with just vast amounts of energy,
you know, as if they were human dynamos.
I mean, take this pair for example.
They started out with a list of, well, pretty humdrum,
humble materials, like engineering bricks and bits of leftover wood,
and a dog-end of a site, frankly.
And from these things they crafted a building of sheer beauty.
And now, in turn, the house, and the garden, and the bus,
and the imminent fostering, they're all beginning to reward
Olaf and Fritha and give them back energy and inspiration by turn.
You know, it's like a sort of atomic nuclear fusion fission
thing that's triangular-shaped,
and they're in the middle of it, as busy as ever.
What next?
Subtitles by Red Bee Media