Grand Designs and Upcycling

There was an amazing Grand Designs on last night,

Artists Freddie Robins and Ben Coode-Adams left their modest urban flat to convert a huge Grade II-listed timber-framed barn in Essex into a live/work space for themselves and their daughter Willa.
The whole design is based around creating a massive free-form contemporary space with very few walls, to display their ever expanding collection of toys and ephemera.
But at seven times the size of an average three-bedroom house, turning this 500-year-old building into any kind of home is a challenge.
As Freddie and Ben grapple with the scale of this project they begin to question whether their quirky ideas are workable.
For this young family, this conversion will transform their lives, but is there such a thing as too much space? And can a cavernous barn like this ever make a cosy and comfortable home?

I found it very inspiring and would love a project like that one day! The way they salvaged and saved bits of the barn to use as elements of the structure later down the construction was brilliant! A real testament to the ethos of recycle/upcycle. I loved the way Ben was creating new sculptural brackets out of scrap and broken steel piping - artistic and beautiful, loved it! Old tea chest panels for doors, crates for shelves, shop display units for housing all their oddments - a museum-like home - really great!!! And to have a great big studio space to play in at the end of it...dream home if ever there was one!!! Whilst thinking about it I was reminded of this website that sells a lot of the things that were salvaged (but with a much heftier price tag!)