Kevin McCloud meets Dorran, who has taken on the ambitious task of building a super-modern underground home on a hill outside Canterbury. He entrusts the work to a team of contractors, but when delays and rising costs force him to take charge of the build himself, Dorran faces the biggest challenge of his life, juggling his time between the site and his work as a ship's master out on the North Sea. However, having promised the house to his wife and children, he knows that failure is not an option.

Kevin meets Mike and Sarah, who bought a remote smallholding in the Derbyshire Dales, somewhere to rear animals and provide a home for themselves and their elderly parents. Kevin follows the couple as they set out to build a 21st-century version of a historic Derbyshire longhouse. Enormous, corrugated and with a highly complex roof shape, it was never going to be an easy build. But soon they face delays and their schedule begins to slide. However, that is nothing compared with the problems of a more personal nature that hit the project.