'I didn’t want to have a normal house': Grand Designs home hits the market for just £550,000

Maite Alegre harboured a lifelong dream of building a house and when she finally got the chance she was determined to create something extraordinary — a glass-fronted home with soaring interior spaces.

“I didn’t want to have a normal house,” she said.

She achieved her self-build goal, and her project was featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs: The Streets in 2022, and presenter Kevin McCloud was entranced by the “breathtaking” design.

The property took four years to build and Alegre and her husband Carlos Dean, both 61, have spent three years living there. But now the couple have decided the time has come to say goodbye to the home Grand Design that McCloud described as “extraordinary”.

Their Oxfordshire house is on the market with estate agent The Modern House, priced at £550,000 — some £50,000 less than they spent on building it.

The couple, both 61, were living in Woodstock, near Oxford, when the opportunity to become self-builders finally knocked.

“All my life I have been looking to build a house,” said Alegre. “It was very difficult because every time you saw a plot come up for sale you couldn’t buy it unless you already had the money in the bank, and we would have had to put our house on the market and sell it first.”

Alegre had all but given up hope when a friend told her about Graven Hill, a new development taking shape in Bicester, Oxfordshire. As well as new build home the pioneering site contains self-build plots sold shovel-ready with foundations and services already installed.

The couple, who have three children aged 23 to 34, loved the idea of living at the heart of a self-build community. In 2017 they sold their house, moved into a rented home, and paid £220,000 for the plot plus foundations.

Alegre, working with the architects Chance de Silva, then set about designing a wood-framed house with a showpiece double-height kitchen and dining room, a mezzanine living room above it, plus three bedrooms, and a decked garden.

The house is reinforced with steel to support its huge open spaces and expanses of bespoke glass, which is framed by a mix of aluminium and larch cladding.

Alegre was born and raised in Rioja, northern Spain, and her inspiration came from a local landmark.

Architect Santiago Calatrava’s Bodegas Ysios winery is a fantastical undulating building that Alegre couldn’t hope to replicate on her compact rectangular plot, and with a limited budget — the couple set out intending to spend £150,000 but ended up spending a total of £600,000.

But she was able to pay homage to the winery in her choice of materials, which is part clad in cedar slats, with an aluminium roof, and a giant central window.

Building work began in 2020, and the couple were able to move into the house in September 2021, having taken out extra loans and raided their pension pot to complete it. “When we set out we were just completely naive,” said Dean.

Alegre had to fight hard to turn her dreams into reality – in particular finding a way to install the huge double height window on the front of the house. “And we had been going to clad the house with zinc, but I loved the Ysios aluminium,” she said. “People told me it was going to be tacky and horrible but I had a feeling… and we are very happy with it.”

Dean, for his part, admits he would never have built a house had he been left to his own devices. But, after spending many years of her life raising children while he focussed on his career as a leadership coach, he felt it was Alegre’s time to do something she really wanted.

“Maite has cultivated this dream for as long as I have known her,” he said. “I felt it was the right thing to do, and I had confidence she could do it.”

Alegre describes the period of designing and building the house as “the happiest four years of my life,” which begs the question of why the couple have decided to sell, and at a loss.

“Maite’s parents are getting older and we found ourselves spending more time with them in Spain,” said Dean. “Then we decided to move over, which is why the house is for sale.

“We never did it to make money. It is something to be proud of, and the fact that Maite got to deliver her creative dream makes it worth it.”