Your Home Made Perfect

34-year-old Andy and 32-year-old Esther have lived in their three-bedroom house in Stirling, Scotland, for almost four years. With idyllic views of the river and castle, the couple love where they live, but with three small children, their house is cramped and no longer works for family life.

39-year-old James and 40-year-old Vicky have lived in their 1970s detached house in Kent for five years with their two young children. Bought for the large garden, they have since discovered the house is completely impractical for family life. Like homes across Britain it has been chopped and changed making the space disjointed. The divided layout is taking its toll on family life. James and Vicky agree they need to rethink their home, but that is all they agree on! Working to a healthy budget of £100k, can our two rival architects finally solve the problem that has had James and Vicky locked in stalemate for five years?

36-year-old Suzanne and 41-year-old Danny have wildly differing views on how to improve their cramped 1960s bungalow in Bedfordshire. With three children and only two usable bedrooms, they are in urgent need of help but while Suzanne wants style and a wow factor, Danny is fixated on storage and practicality. With the couple at loggerheads, architects Laura Jane Clark and Robert Jamison go head to head to win the commission. The prize? To radically transform this dysfunctional space into a spectacular and practical home, all working to their £70k budget.

Accountants Mimi and Luke have lived in their terraced house in Grantham for five years with their two-year-old daughter and Mimi’s 10-year-old son. With Luke’s two older children often there too, the house is bursting at the seams, yet the layout is entirely unpractical. They fell in love with the home because of its large garden, but the living areas are a rabbit warren of small disjointed rooms. There is barely enough space for the couple and their growing children to all be in one room together. Perhaps worse still, there is no view of the big garden from the house! With a budget of £30k, two competing architects have their work cut out to rethink the layout and improve family life.

In 2015 Becky and Cris moved from a small cottage to a four-bed 1960s house in Wiltshire, hoping it would provide desperately needed space for their growing children. A family of keen musicians, they also hoped a large reception room would give them the opportunity to play their instruments together. But three years later the house is awkward and unhomely with dark and uninviting rooms. A poor layout means the four of them live quite separately, and those dreamed of musical get-togethers never happen.

Helen and Rob live in a Victorian terraced house in St Albans. When they bought it five years ago, it needed a lot of work. They have put all their energy into renovating the entrance and the front room, but the back of the house remains a mishmash of tiny and unpractical rooms. A narrow kitchen is uncomfortably close to the only family bathroom, and a dark, windowless utility space has Helen comparing the rear of her home to a dungeon.

Ruth and Lindsey live in a 1990s developer home near Middlesbrough. Their focus in recent years has been achieving their goal of having a family. Now, with two young daughters, it is time for Lindsey and Ruth to tackle their home, which fails to meet the needs of their family. The problems begin the moment they come through the door. The tiny hallway barely allows for a buggy to be brought into the house. When inside, it has to be brought through almost every room on the ground floor before it can be put away. Meanwhile, the kitchen has almost no storage and is disconnected from the living spaces where the children play, so the family are rarely all in the same room at the same time.

Truck salesman Mike and urban designer Lisa live in a three-bedroom Victorian terrace in Shrewsbury which Mike bought 20 years ago. After getting married, they hoped to have a family and their treasured son George is now ten years old. What was a spacious home for two has now become a squeeze for a family of three, only made worse by the huge range of conflicting hobbies that compete for space. Lisa is desperate for a calm place to do her yoga, whilst Mike and George play the drums and the guitar respectively. But it is not just music Mike wants to focus on - more than anything he wants a place he can spend quality time with George, building and tinkering with bikes.