Design engineer Mark Butler, wife Penny and their three young children live in a seemingly idyllic old farmhouse in Warwickshire.
Mark is paralysed from the waist down following a motorcycle accident, and his home has no accessibility built-in. Getting around the house in his wheelchair, using the kitchen and bathroom and putting the kids to bed upstairs ranges from difficult to impossible – and it’s only going to get worse as he gets older.
But indomitable Mark, a former Paralympic swimmer, who’s spent the last 30 years developing sports cars and racing bikes, has a radical solution. Mark and Penny decide to build a dual-purpose family and wheelchair friendly home on the site of a redundant barn next door.
Their cutting-edge new barn will have accessibility at its core – with a drive-in basement, a passenger lift, accessible kitchen and bathroom, step-free flooring and extra-wide retractable sliding doors. But building such a unique, accessible home over three floors for just £600,000 proves a considerable challenge. And when personal circumstances suddenly change too, the strain on Mark and Penny becomes almost unbearable.
Presenter Kevin McCloud follows some of Britain’s most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams
Production details
Written and Presented by Kevin McCloud. Series Producer, John Lonsdale. Directors: Ed Sunderland. Executive Producer, Cal Turner. A Boundless West production.
