Next time you are house hunting and it seems stressful, remember the story of a couple who decided to spend over £1m creating a dream home on a Scottish Island by asking a Welsh company to build a huge modular home and transport it over 600 miles - that's proper stress.
Ex-Olympic curling medallist Ewan and his partner Amy wanted their children to grow up surrounded by nature in an idyllic location on the remote Scottish Island North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, with the beach as their back garden and breathtaking views as their neighbourhood.
The couple were risking their whole life savings from their family insurance business in Inverness with a budget of £900,000 to construct their dream home, but this wasn't going to be a conventional self-build, they wanted it to be constructed to their specification and optimise the views from their plot of land.
The incredible journey from Welsh flatpack home to stunning Scottish retreat is documented by Channel 5's Build Your Dream Home in the Country presented by Mark Millar, who always bounds enthusiastically through every show and through every building site, bringing his decades of construction experience to the commentary.
Buying the land was the easy part, working with an architect who morphed their dream home ideas into detailed plans was exciting, but locating a company that could provide the ultimate flatpack house was a harder task.
Welsh companies Kenton Jones and Unnos Systems were the specialists to do the job in conjunction with Koto Cabins and Koto Living interior design studio, using the system Tŷ Unnos, a whole house construction system using engineered home-grown timber components designed to accommodate the characteristics of softwood timber grown in Wales.
Headed up by project leader Kenton Jones, the house would be made using wood supplied onsite, with every tree felled replaced by two more.
The building of the house was not the issue, the skilled craftspeople working on constructing the dream home produced the beautiful wooden structure to perfection, and even rising material prices and delays due to Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic only slowed the process rather than stopped it.
The house was built in seven modules, each costing around £100k, and each needing a huge truck to carry them the hundreds of miles to the site in Scotland through narrow lanes, on busy motorways, and even across the water on a ferry.
And it was the transportation from Wales to Scotland that was stressing Ewan the most. He said: "This is the biggest and the most challenging part of this project, transporting the modules from Wales to Scotland via trucks and then ferry."
Two of the modules were larger than the others but had to be designed to fit through the door in the larger of the two ferries taking the flatpack abode over to the island.
Ewan said: "The dimensions of the modules have been measured specifically to get on the boat. So on the width, the width is absolutely maxed out. So we have to make sure it goes on and off the ferry."
Even getting the modules onto the lorries took patience and skill - one rushed move could cost thousands of pounds. And once the lorries were loaded and the precious cargo secured, the wider than average vehicles needed a police escort the whole way, requiring co-ordination with multiple forces.
Everything seemed to be going well until the lorries were close to the ferry crossing. The lorry convoy were on time because missing the ferries meant waiting a week for the next one, so that was one stress diminished, but the larger of the vessels had just broken down and had been taken to Glasgow to be repaired.
The smaller five modules got to the site unscathed on smaller ferries and, after some anxious waiting around, the larger ferry appeared, would the larger modules fit through the ferry door?
Of course, Kenton and his team's measurements were spot on for the doorway, with 35mm of space around each side to spare, although the entry and exit was taken at a very slow pace and the lorry drivers quite rightly got a robust round of applause.
And just when everyone thought the stress was done, a bend in a Scottish lane almost derailed the journey thanks to safety barriers narrowing the route, which had to be temporarily lowered.
Team Wales, Kenton and the gang, were waiting for delivery and like a slow and expensive, giant Lego set they began building the house on top for the laid concrete base and connecting the modules together.
Of course everything fit to perfection, this is a skilled Welsh team tackling this complex job, but no-one could control the weather. The small window of fine weather between the forecast of high winds had always been a worry for the couple, and by the time the seventh section was due to be fitted, the gusts had become untenable.
The final segment needed to be raised on the expensive, hired crane to create a stunning second floor master bedroom and the deadline for its return was fast approaching. The crew were up at dawn to try and fit the final piece but the wind was still too strong.
The crane was only booked until 5pm and any use later than that would incur a £3,000 extra hire fee, so at 4pm the decision was taken to give it a go. The family and Mark watched on as the wind gusts buffeted the hanging £100k module but it eventually was slowly positioned and secured - the stress was over.
And the home that has been created, which did go over budget to £1.1m, is absolutely incredible, a high-end stunner with arresting views through massive windows and doors at every angle.
Four smaller modules form the jaw-dropping central living space, with herringbone floor and triple glazed windows, with two large modules would be put on top of each other for the boys' bedrooms.
The master bedroom can boast floor-to-ceiling windows as frames out to the panoramic sea view from the bed or from the window-hugging seating area.
And Mark absolutely adores it. He gushes: "Everything is just immaculate. The quality of this build, I'm actually shaking, it's so gorgeous.
"Everything is just so organic. You think of a modular build as this very hard structure. I forgot this was a modular build because it's just blended into the countryside. I'm quite emotional about it.
"As I'm walking around the house, I keep spotting all these amazing little architectural features. This house is full of gems." Congratulations Kenton, Unnos Systems, and all involved - Team Wales, you smashed it in Scotland.
Build Your Dream Home in the Country is on Channel 5 on Thursday at 8pm and available via catch-up.
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