Mersea Island, Essex

In this brand-new series, George Clarke meets people who are taking on challenging huge builds for powerful emotional reasons, from being drawn back to an area that they've always loved or a place with strong family memories, to taking on a house that's close to their heart - like historic ruins that need rescuing, or a wreck of a beach house. We follow them as they uproot their lives, stretch their finances and test their relationships, all in order to build wonderful homes of their dreams. Daniel, Laura and their son Archie have moved to the Essex island of Mersea. Laura and all her family grew up on the island and she wants little Archie to enjoy a unique, idyllic childhood like the one she had there. To make that dream come true, they've bought what is little more than an old, drafty, cramped beach house just a stone's throw from the seaside. But their dream could soon turn into a nightmare as they try to rebuild their run-down space as a modern, sustainable family home, on a budget of £50,000. That money needs to stretch to raising the roof to build a whole new second floor to fit in bedrooms, creating a new steel skeleton for the wooden walls, and insulating the whole house! Dan hopes to keep the costs down by doing most of the work himself with a little help from his brother and dad, but it's a massive undertaking that starts to eat up all his time, energy and money, and push him to breaking point...