Kevin starts work on his hand made home by venturing into the bowels of London. With mains electricity and gas not an option for his bolt hole, Kevin hopes to make biodiesel for a lamp from the huge stinking 'fatbergs' that clog up the city's sewers. For the cabin's structure, Kevin cuts down two ancient oaks, and starts putting together the wooden shell of the building. He also experiments with a Wild West technique of splitting logs by gunpowder, and tries to make the whole cabin mobile because of planning regulations.
Now that Kevin's cabin's glorious shingled shell has been finished, the next major task is to make it both habitable and magnificent. Kevin needs a solid, durable floor, a window to let in natural light, and most important of all, the heart of the home, a fire for heat. As Kevin wants to reuse, repurpose and recycle as much of his building as possible, he decides to turn a 1930s heavy steel safe into a wood burning stove. But he has to use the dangerous tool of the 70s bank robber, a thermic lance, to do it. Kevin tries to build a cheese floor, an ancient Viking invention that uses milk. And then for perhaps his toughest test yet, Kevin attempts to make glass from scratch using sand. To celebrate the next stage of the building, Kevin's friends burn a wicker man, a pagan tradition, to scare away any vagrant woodland ghosts that might haunt the new cabin.
Kevin's cabin is now habitable, but he has yet to add the vital furnishings to turn it into a comfortable home. And more pressingly, he has nothing to cook with. It's time for some fiendishly clever off grid solutions. With Kevin's cabin not connected to electric or gas, he examines a leftfield experiment in north Wales, where they're turning dog poo into methane. And as the cabin will be a place of rest, Kevin decides to make an armchair out of a 1950s tractor seat and also crafts a small lightweight bed from willow.
Luxury is the one thing Kevin hasn't yet got at his handmade cabin in the woods. It's an off grid marvel, but what he really wants is a hot tub he can relax in, sip red wine and stare at the setting sun with his friends. He heads off to find a unique solution for his hot tub at an airfield graveyard, while making a luxury bath robe out of alpaca wool and fashioning a 'drop down' veranda. At last, Kevin's wondrous cabin looks finished, but he wants to give everyone who has helped him a house warming to remember.
Kevin salvages the oak ribs from a shipwrecked fishing boat to build a curvaceous, gravity-defying clifftop deck on which he can spend the summer al fresco. To light his seaside retreat, Kevin taps into an unusual energy supply residing in the waves, in the form of fish oil. And in a madcap dash to the local pub, Kevin hits the high seas with his Man Friday, Will Trickett, on a raft made from inflated sheepskin balloons. But between them and the perfect pint are the strong currents of the Bristol Channel.
Kevin builds a sun lounge for his beach hut, his own hammock to lie in and some lobster traps made out of old shopping trolleys to go fishing with. Kevin sets about doubling the floor space by building a beautiful, glistening sun lounge out of recycled windows culled from lorries and aeroplanes, coming up with a crafty design that floats the windows in mid air. Kevin also wants his own hammock to lie in and uses a massive anchor to build a giant-sized hammock that rotates, allowing him to chase the sun across the sky at the turn of a wheel. In search of more junk he can recycle, Kevin takes a dirty dive into London's oldest dock and discovers a haul of old shopping trolleys which he re-purposes into lobster pots.
It's the height of summer and Kevin McCloud's simple shed has already been transformed with the addition of a cliff top terrace and a sun room made from old lorry and airplane windows. Now Kevin plans to take his off-grid beach build to an entirely new level with a magnificent observation tower, three times higher than a double decker bus. Kevin also wants to enhance his cooking facilities and make an amazing barbecue by re-purposing a World War Two naval mine. Spectacularly, Kevin opts to form the barbecue by blasting the mine in half with a huge explosive charge.
As summer begins to fade, Kevin introduces a few of life's little luxuries, with his very own solar powered shower and a sublime floating beach bar made from flotsam and jetsam.
