A couple who both overcame brain tumours and multiple cancers have opened up their home to others going through serious illnesses, four years after first appearing on Grand Designs.
Greg, a pub landlord, first met artist Georgie through a charity when he had just recovered from his brain tumour 15 years ago.
Georgie, meanwhile, first had a brain tumour at just 10 years old. She was then diagnosed with thyroid cancer aged 20 and has since battled 90 types of skin cancer – some of which are ongoing.
The pair fell in love, with Greg proposing in 2018 before they moved into an annexe attached to her parents’ house in Kent after tying the knot.
Together, they set out to convert a protected dilapidated 35-year-old barn in her parents’ garden after dreaming about building their single-storey ‘forever home’. Their plan consisted of an open kitchen, living and dining space, an art workshop, a snug, multiple bedrooms and a utility.
With a budget of £250,000, Greg rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty, doing much of the work himself to keep costs down after spending a whopping £80,000 on the groundwork alone.
In just 18 months, they were able to complete the project, only £25,000 over budget, with Greg calling the property ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unbelievable’ and Georgie remarking that they had both been given ‘a second chance in life’.
And now Georgie has transformed one of their bedrooms into a retreat for friends going through health troubles – to give them a chance to break away from reality and relax in the countryside in their cosy barn.
In this evening’s episode of Grand Designs, host Kevin McCloud revisited the couple in July 2025 – six years after they started work on their unique property – and found that Georgie wanted to give back to her community of friends who had supported her through tough times.
The painter, who has since had a major operation and is currently on a high dose of chemotherapy, said: ‘We know what it’s like when you’re recovering and we like to look after people because we know how awful it can be and how rough times are. [We want] to look after people like we’ve been looked after.
Greg, a pub landlord, and Georgie, an artist, are pictured speaking to host Kevin McCloud in summer 2025
The couple’s complete converted barn is pictured in summer 2025, surrounded by picturesque greenery and shrubs
Greg and Georgie opted for a single-storey house with an open kitchen, living and dining room
‘[They can] have a space that they can call their own for the weekend and just come and do whatever they want or nothing at all.’
Jodie, one of her pals, who has benefited from her serene wilderness retreat, said that staying at Georgie and Greg’s home allowed her to ‘escape’ her sickness, which was not disclosed in the show.
Speaking alongside her partner, she said: ‘It was a scary time, so coming here was a real escape for us. It provided the respite that we needed, just physically and mentally; we were exhausted. There’s this calmness that speaks Greg and Georgie all over it, in the house and in the room in particular.’
She also praised Georgie for offering up her home to others, adding: ‘I think it’s even more extraordinary that [she] is still undergoing treatment, she’s still doing all these things, yet they’ve still opened up this space to others who need it.’
Georgie has since lost her hair as a result of her medication and now wears a wig, but her health has not stopped her from achieving her dreams.
She has found solace in art, with their humble barn hosting 130 people who all came to see her breathtaking paintings in an exhibit, and she now runs classes upstairs in her workshop.
Georgie and Greg have opened up their home to friends suffering from serious illnesses, with Jodie (pictured right) benefitting from staying in their barn
Jodie (pictured centre) commended Georgie for opening up her cosy barn even though she has going through chemotherapy herself
‘It’s been nearly 30 years of treatment and operations, when you’re down in the hole and you don’t think you can scramble out again, you make the most of all the opportunities and every day is special and you just have to carry on,’ she said.
When Kevin visited them for an update in September 2020, the pair had moved into their home but still hadn’t built some of the bedrooms, the utility room or completed any of the landscaping.
However, when he came back in 2025, the exterior house appeared to look completely different, surrounded by picturesque shrubs and greenery, complete with solar panels on the roof.
The idea for rehashing the barn came when Greg was diagnosed with cancer, which prompted him to have a long, hard think about what he wanted to achieve in his life.
‘Having a brain tumour was one of the best kick up the a***s I’ve ever had,’ he said in 2019.
‘I just remember in that hospital bed, I was just weighing up all the things I hadn’t done in life and how I wanted to cross them all off. One of them was to build a dream home. I wouldn’t be here now doing what I’m doing if I hadn’t got ill or met Georgie. I want to show people that I am well again and I am able to do this.’
And his building efforts are not to be sneered at. After completing the long, gruelling process of constructing his property with his bare hands, multiple family members have asked Greg to help with their projects.
He has since separated the annexe from the main house for Georgie’s parents, Julie and Tom, as they wanted to downsize and is currently helping his brother build an extension.
‘I enjoy building, I find it therapeutic and creative,’ he told Kevin.
And nobody is more grateful than Tom and Julie, who say they adore having the couple next door to them, with their other daughter living close by, too.
‘Every single day I look out and I think “This couldn’t get any better really” to have them all so near,’ Julie, Georgie’s mother, said.
Georgie and Greg are pictured showing Grand Designs around their £275,000 barn conversion build in 2025
The trio are pictured walking around the double height open plan kitchen, living and dining room
Some of the furniture used in the house was made from oak taken from Julie and Tom’s garden
The couple had built solar panels on top of their barn’s roof to help their home run on low energy
In 2019, Georgie described her history with cancer as a ‘long road’, saying she has been battling the disease for the past 23 years.
She explained: ‘Meeting Greg was amazing because we had a lovely connection and we have an understanding of what it’s like to be really unwell.’
At the start of the build in March 2019, they were determined to start the exciting new chapter and start digging, with Greg saying: ‘Now I feel, I’ve beaten cancer, I can do anything. I can build a house, easy, that’s fine. And be a little bit further away from the in-laws, possibly.’
Starting the build, Greg revealed he had little project management experience, other than overseeing the renovation of his local pub five years ago, but said he was keen to get the job finished in just 12 months.
He explained: ‘We’re hoping to do it in a year. If we can do it in a year. My pub, we’re doing quite a lot of work there and I cope with that. That’s the first stepping stone. This is our forever home.’
Georgie said: ‘It’s a very special building actually. There were times I was so ill the goal of the day would be to walk down here, and sit outside the barn and that’s the only energy I had really.
‘It has a lovely atmosphere in it, it’s lovely being able to look over the field.’
Greg added: ‘I’m very lucky to be invited into it.’
A local architect drew up a plan for the barn and, despite being only 35 years old, planning restrictions prevented them from replacing it because it was in a conservation area, so it had to be conserved as if it were ancient.
Complicating the project from the outset, the timber frame has to remain standing throughout the construction.
Greg said the budget was £250,000, and revealed they’d be financing the project with savings and a family loan, with Georgie revealing the barn had been a ‘wedding present’ from her parents.
Thankfully, there was enough in the budget to pay his friend Sam, who helped Greg out with the project on-site.
Their next task was removing the concrete floor, but Sam confessed: ‘It’s a very big job for just the two of us. But we work well together, that makes it easier as well.’
Once the concrete had cleared, they handed over to a specialist ground worker, Paul, but were left struck by the £80,000 cost.
However, they quickly discovered that they would need to underpin each pillar, with professionals suggesting it could cost them £20,000.
After six weeks, Greg made the decision to part ways with the professional groundworkers and do the job himself with Sam and Georgie.
Thanks to Greg’s drive and energy, two months into the project, the trenches were ready to be filled with concrete.
Having done so much of the groundwork themselves, they hadn’t spent more than the £80,000 they had budgeted.
But Greg was quick to move on to the next challenge, getting a rotten oak tree next to the house felled to create furniture.
Four months in, and Greg began work on the steel two-storey cube for the middle of the barn, enlisting the help of Sam’s cousin and dad Cullen to help erect the columns in the centre.
Unless there’s at least 2 metres clearance from the edge of the structure to the ridge of the roof, building control won’t sign off the upstairs level as a habitable space.
But Greg was left gutted to learn the steel beams were 50 mm out. To meet building regulations, he then decided to remake the foundations for the steel frame.
He then tackled the roof, simply ripping down and rebuilding the parts necessary to add the windows.
But they reached another hurdle when they found out their company in charge of their eco-heating system, had gone bust and they had lost a budget of £5,000.
When Covid-19 hit, Georgie went into full isolation, with Greg arranging for the bi-fold doors to be fitted and stockpiling materials for the long months ahead.
By the late summer of 2020, the couple had finished off the incredible modern barn with Kevin praising them for the ‘extraordinary finesse’ on the build.
