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Home improvement A dream coming true - all over by Christmas? (Filed: 14/12/2002) Russell & Janette Harris Russell Harris, 45, is a television presenter and producer. He is married to Jannette, 32, and they have two children, James, 13, and Sophie, seven. The Harrises are converting and extending a Grade-II listed, 1870 water tower in Lymm, Cheshire, into a modern, family home. The build is scheduled to finish next summer. High anxieties: Russell and Jannette Harris have hit lots of snags with their water tower 'It just doesn't get any easier," says Russell. "Jannette and I were looking at some old video footage of when we were living on the farm, where we were before the project, and it hit me that it has been six years since we bought the tower. Sophie has spent most of her life listening to her parents talk about it, and I've spent my forties doing this sodding thing." In the past two months, work on the site has been delayed by a combination of adverse weather and the worse-than-expected state of the turret, the central part of the home, around which Russell's modernist vision will spiral. "I'm beginning to sound like Princess Diana, but Jed, the site manager from Redrow, is my rock. He has got a way of approaching things that is very pragmatic." The builders have had to rebuild the stone of the turret, after finding that it is not strong enough to support the structure as it is. "My lowest moment was when we had got a little way into rebuilding it. There's a huge steel girder that has run up the side of the turret since it was first built to support it. It turned out that the girder had become so rusty that one of the stonemasons actually put his hand through it. "The builders were threatening to walk off the site and we had a heated argument. From my point of view, I wanted to make sure we didn't go any more over-budget, but finally we decided on rebuilding it the expensive way. Now, there is a thick brick wall running up the inside to support the tower. "The rebuilding of the tower is going slower than I expected, because everything has to be lifted up by hand, and a crash deck has to be erected at each new level so that the stonemasons are safe. We thought about using the original stone, but instead we are using a beautiful, red- and buff-mottled stone, from Staffordshire. "We do have a fancy idea for Christmas that, because the turret is so visible, we want to put a tree on top of it and get Sophie to turn the lights on. The roof should be on by then, hopefully. "Happily, the children are getting into the whole project: James goes down to the site quite often and has his own hard hat, jacket and work boots. Both the kids have drawn out plans for their bedrooms, although it's fair to say that their plans don't exactly match up with my own vision. "I'm hoping to win them over, and I think that with a design like ours, it's really going to be the lighting that brings a room to life. We can colour the bedrooms with lights. "We're now looking at completion in the summer, with September as the worst-case scenario." © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002

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