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The extra £100,000 came out of his earnings, with every extra pound over the original estimate sending him further into despair. “I ended up hating the house for a while,” Digby recalls. “I felt I had failed. Retrospectively, to build a home for £250,000 seems great, but you see a lot of people in magazines claiming to have built five-bedroom houses for £150,000. I really don’t know how they managed it, because I really tried.”
Once he had financially committed to the idea, a team of 10 builders were set to work. The project was managed by a friend, Stephen, on whom Digby relied heavily for much of the time he was away filming.
While it is a truth universally acknowledged that you must never go away while your builders retile a kitchen — let alone build an entire house from scratch — Digby had to work outside London and abroad.
“The thing about building a house is that it’s never one thing that is the most stressful — it’s everything,” he says, looking troubled by the memory. “It’s your plaster not being delivered, which means your plasterer is being paid to stand around, as you’ve got no work for him; it’s dealing with skip permits; it’s suddenly realising that you’re meant to be measuring the outer window, not the inner frame. Everything around you is a decision, and if you’re trying to make those decisions when you’re away, listening to your project manager on the phone trying to explain something to you that you can’t see or understand... Well, it’s tough. It reduced me to tears a couple of times.”
Inevitably, there were several mishaps, including the time the neighbour’s car was buried under a mountain of bricks. (In their wisdom, the builders decided to tear down an external wall by attaching one end of a rope to the wall and the other to their Land Rover). By and large, though — car crushings aside — Digby’s neighbours were supportive of the project and unconcerned that the garden was being “grabbed”. It helped that he kept them up to date with what was happening; if anything did go wrong, a hasty explanatory visit, bottle in hand, kept everyone happy.
It’s only recently that Digby has been able to acknowledge to himself that, all in all, £250,000 is pretty good going. “I only allowed myself to go crazy on the two things that were most important to me,” he says — those being his sofa, which cost £6,000, and his Vi-Spring bed, which cost an indulgent £18,000. “The rest cost very little. I paid £80 for my dining table and £30 for these Eiffel chairs, both bought off eBay. And everything else was really, really cheap.”
He is thrilled with his minimalist home, with its clean lines and acres of glass. “How many people get the chance to build something from scratch, take five years to do it, and end up not owing a penny?” he asks. “Maybe I played it better than those people on Grand Designs after all. They are often vague about the money, but you can see it in their eyes: they’re terrified about how much it is costing. They’ve blown £900,000, and it’s broken them. That’s when I feel smug again, as I know my house cost me a fraction of that.”
I suspect Digby is now starting to realise that maybe he wasn’t such a failure after all.
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How sad that he didn't have much chance to enjoy the house altho the reports say he was in a flat so seems he wasn't living at the house.
Lizx
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I just found this report from last summer:
August 2, 2009
Kristian Digby: Here’s one I built earlier
The TV property presenter thought he knew it all – until he put up a house in his garden
TV Presenter Kristian Digby at his minimalist house in Stratford, east London
Jessie Hewitson
Being a television property presenter, I thought I’d be fine,” Kristian Digby says with a wry laugh. “I felt a sense of superiority. I used to watch Grand Designs and think: ‘Of course they are going to screw up — why don’t they see it coming?’”
Yet when Digby, host of BBC1’s To Buy or Not to Buy, put his money where his mouth was and set about building his own dream home — in the overgrown garden of his first house — he wasn’t quite so self-assured.
“When you’re actually building, you become blind to the most obvious problems,” he says. “Why I assumed I would be fine, I don’t know. I’d never done anything remotely like it before — I can’t even even wire a plug.”
Walking around the product of his labours — a supermodern detached two-bedroom property in Stratford, east London — I conclude that it was a good idea after all. The sleek, light-filled house flows beautifully. The ground floor is open-plan, with the kitchen, living room and patio garden melding seamlessly into each other. High-tech additions such as a remote-controlled skylight above the bed, which allows him to stargaze and enjoy a gentle breeze as he nods off, add a luxurious touch. (It closes automatically if it rains.) Still, it has taken five punishing years to get to this point. Digby, 32, bought his first home when he was only 23. The five-bedroom semi in the insalubrious suburb cost him £185,000 — remember, it was only in 2005 that the London won the right to stage the 2012 Olympics, to be held in and around Stratford — but the value to Digby, who was born into a family of property developers, lay not in future capital growth, but in its enormous garden.
Spanning about half an acre, it was most likely the site of another home, bombed during the second world war and never rebuilt. “It almost seemed I had to [build there], because the garden would allow it,” he says. “I felt bullied into it, in a way. It would have been a bit of a waste if I hadn’t.”
Today, he can see his original home, now let out, from an upstairs window in his new designer pad, which must be satisfying. The building process, however, was far from that. Digby admits that, despite starring in property makeover programmes, he had no idea of the stress involved: the sleepless nights, financial panic and the fear that he was making a huge mistake.
The planning process alone cost £6,000 — it was refused twice and he only won on appeal. The problem, he believes, is that he wanted to construct something modern, and he was building in an “infill” space, a process otherwise known as garden-grabbing [see panel, right]. One of the planners’ objections was that the new house didn’t blend in architecturally with the area, a claim Digby finds laughable.
“Let’s be honest, this is Stratford,” he says. “It’s a mess. You have lots of council flats with brutal architecture, and all the facades of the Victorian terraces are mixed. There’s cladding, pebbledash, plastic porches — no continuity. I wanted to ask them, ‘Which bit of the road do you want me to conform with? The prefab garages, the council flats or the mishmash of terraced houses?’”
The day after Digby got the go-ahead for his new home, and against all the odds, London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. Stratford would see large-scale regeneration. Everything was finally going his way.
The brief he gave his architect, Ben Paul, of Neu Architects, which has worked on homes for Jasper Conran and the shoe designer Patrick Cox, was challenging: a statement home on a budget of only £150,000. Digby funded the build by taking £50,000 equity out of his old home on the site, raising an additional £100,000 by buying 20 properties at auction and flipping them. Sticking to ex-council properties, renovating some but not all, he sold them on in 2006 and 2007, making a profit of £5,000 or so with each sale.
“The market was moving so fast that sometimes I just put them straight back on the market without doing anything,” he says. “To be honest, it was just a paperwork exercise. I didn’t even see some of the flats I bought.”
Being the right person in the right place at the right time means Digby is now in the enviable position of owning his new property, mortgage-free. Although he has not had it valued professionally, he believes it is worth about £450,000 and the old one roughly £380,000. Saving on a mortgage on his new place has come in handy, considering that it ended up going significantly over budget — the total build cost came to £250,000, including furniture.
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I too am amazed and saddened by young people dying in these terrible ways. We only hear about celebs who do this to themselves, presumably there must be hordes of "ordinary" people who die this way too?
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He worked a lot with Dom Littlewood didn't he, and they seemed to have a good rapport.
How sad that some people cannot appreciate a person for his personality and presence, and just judge by his sexual preferences.
I am always sad when that apparent cause of death is given and it must be so hard for his family to have it announced to the world. No privacy or dignity in death alas.
Lizx
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I hope these comments from his work colleagues will be how he is remembered whatever the cause of death
Dom Littlewood : "There's not a bad word I can say about Kristian.
"He was a lovely fun, nice, jolly, decent person."
His agent and friend Jo Wander said: "I am devastated by the loss. He was a lovely guy and a very talented presenter and director. I will miss him hugely and my thoughts at this time are with his family and his many friends. He will be sorely missed."
Alistair Appleton, "Kristian was a fine, charming, complex, rather dazzling man. TV is duller and straighter and drearier without him. I was proud to have met him, hung out with him, known him a little."
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Now says it is expected to find that it was a solo sex game that went tragically wrong.
Very, very sad
Linda
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I am so sad to hear this.I loved watching his shows,he was so young,full of life,and so enthusiastic about everything.
Rest In Peace Kristian,you will be missed.
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I used to watch his shows quite often,,,He was a lovely man,,full of fun and charm.. What a sad loss it will be to his family and to the world of television..
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Thoughts to his family and friends.
He was a 'breath of fresh air' on what is normally boring day time TV
Ive been on FB and there are some horrid comments from 'gay' haters. How sick can some people be
RIP Kristian
Ginny
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A lovely young man. Full of charm and funny too. Daytime TV will not be the same without him. Condolences to his family and friends.
RIP Kristian.
Lainey x
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I was sad to read this, he was a great chap.
I think he was having a place built and there was a programme following the build, don't know if it was finished and where he was found dead or not but I think it went into more costs than first thought, maybe there were problems and he was going to lose it. I am maybe jumping the gun here, maybe he died of natural causes or something.
I feel very sorry for his family, his Dad helped with the build while he was away and they seemed very close. What a shock for them and his friends, and such a waste of a bright young man.
Rest in peace Christian.
Lizx
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sorry - i just put a thread up too - had not seen your thread have deleted my thread
it is sad
taken from msn home page and also been on smooth news
.BBC daytime television host Kristian Digby has been found dead at his flat.
Police sources said the circumstances of the To Buy Or Not To Buy presenter's death were "unexplained".
He was pronounced dead at the scene when ambulance services arrived at his flat on Richford Road, Newham, east London.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Police were called to reports of a body of a man in his 30s found at an address in Richford Road, E15.
"Ambulance services attended and life was pronounced extinct. Next of kin were informed and we await formal identification.
"There will be a post-mortem at 12 noon at East Ham mortuary."
Newham CID are investigating the "unexplained" circumstances, a police source added.
Digby, a property expert, worked on a string of shows including Double Agents, Living In The Sun, House Swap and Buy It, Sell It, Bank It.
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