Sevenoaks

Greg and Georgie’s young lives have been marked by illness – Greg had a brain tumour in his early twenties while Georgie has been in treatment for various cancers most of her life. But their resilience is remarkable. Having met at a charity event they’re now married and looking to build their first home together. Despite their medical history, they’re going to do it the hard way. Taking on almost all the work themselves, their highly ambitious plan is to convert a cavernous, dilapidated, 35 year old barn in Georgie’s parents' garden in Kent into a peaceful safe haven. It’ll be a huge challenge involving the painstaking conservation of the existing rotten structure, building a new two-storey internal steel frame and recycling everything they can to stretch their modest two hundred and fifty thousand pound budget.  

  

The project gets off to the worse possible start when they discover the foundations, which already need specialist groundworks and will cost a third of their budget, also require expensive underpinning. The only way they can keep the project on budget is for Greg to take over and do the specialist work himself, despite his only previous experience coming from refitting his pub. Constantly out of his depth, Greg repeatedly has to take on vital construction jobs as the build progresses, with just Georgie, a few friends and YouTube to help. Faced with other seemingly overwhelming challenges like Georgie’s ongoing health concerns and the arrival of the pandemic, the stress and exhaustion mount. Moving into their new home, designed for relaxation, recovery and recuperation, seems a very long way off…