The owner of a lighthouse featured in Grand Designs UK, which took almost 11 years to build, has revealed his nightmare is far from over.
Edward Short, who racked up more than $12 million in debt transforming the coastal property, and whose marriage broke up during the mammoth project, says it could be broken up by Christmas unless a buyer is found. The sun reports
One Direction star Harry Styles has shown interest, but no deal has been done so far.
The pad also caught the eye of Michael Jackson’s former bodyguard Matt Fiddes, but Short slammed him as a “time waster”.
Fiddes said he wanted to convert the building into 12 luxury flats but then did not make an offer.
The house brochure has been downloaded over 200,000 times by potential buyers and intruders Great designs spectators
But Mr. Short, who works as a music producer, said The sun: “The thing is, I still don’t know if I’m going to end up with £1 or if I’m going to do well until we get the final deals.
“There are two possible endgames here. Either a happy job or a very sad job on the Christmas tree coming up at the end of the year.”
Painful journey of building a cliff
Short began building Chesil Cliff House and its annex known as The Eye, in North Devon, in 2011.
Construction was intended to take 18 months, but when Great designs presenter Kevin McCloud revisited it in 2019, it was a “corpse”, which he described as looking like a wreck on the seashore.
The TV presenter returned this week for a catch-up and viewers were shocked to see that the house was finally finished, but now Mr Short has to sell because the investors want their money back.
It is currently on the market with an asking price of £10 million ($17.8 million).
Viewers were also shocked that the construction cost Mr. Short as he revealed he had split from fashion buyer wife Hazel. Viewers were also amazed by the transformation of the couple’s two daughters, who weren’t even teenagers when they first appeared on screen in 2016.
Lauren, now 21, and Nicole, 22, spoke of how relieved they were that the house was finally finished, claiming their parents would probably have split up anyway.
Short said he was “disappointed” watching the episode “Revisited” because he felt the show covered too much old ground.
She said she watched the episode with Hazel and her boyfriend Steve to make sure they could call their daughters to “check they were OK” afterwards.
“The girls are very relaxed, confident and strong, as parents, that’s everything you want from your kids,” Short said.
“Lauren saw it but Nicole is in New Zealand so she hasn’t seen it yet. I know it goes to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and America, all 52 countries.
“So it’s a lot of exposure and we have to see what comes back.
“Lauren was very, very happy and kind of relieved. I think they’ve worked with her quite a bit on camera and I think she was worried about some things she shouldn’t be worried about.
“But for Hazel and for me, it was a very suffocating moment when you suddenly see your children at ages that you can almost remember, but it seems so far away.
“There they sit on a bunk at 10 or 11 years old and then they come home from school, and now they are young women of the world.
“So that’s quite a long period of time and that really drives it home. It’s a fitting punch.”
This story originally appeared in The Sun and is republished here with permission