After two decades on A Place In The Sun, showing Brits that an idyllic life in Spain is achievable, presenter Jasmine Harman took the plunge herself two years ago, when she and her husband, TV cameraman Jon Boast, decamped from south London with their two children to Estepona on Spain’s Costa del Sol to start a new life.
But their escape turned into a nightmare when Jon suffered a major health issue. ‘He was unable to work for five months, so the extra financial strain was intense,’ explains Jasmine, 49.
It’s just one of many dramas in her new 15-part Channel 4 series Jasmine Harman’s Renovation In The Sun, which charts the huge difficulties the family faced.
The couple bought a house that needed completely renovating and the strain of that, coupled with Jon’s illness, put a lot of pressure on their marriage. ‘You wouldn’t believe the amount of strain my husband put me through, although it was largely to do with things that were outside our control,’ says Jasmine.
‘Everything was on me, including looking after him, which of course I was happy to do, but it was just a lot. At times it felt very, very overwhelming and I was thinking, “Will I ever get through this?”’
Her job on A Place In The Sun meant Jasmine had to spend weeks filming away from her children, Joy, now 12, and Albion, nine. In Spain, she’d often be able to commute to work daily.
They chose Estepona, a coastal town about 90km southwest of Malaga, because Jasmine had shown dozens of properties there and fallen in love with it. ‘It feels very Spanish and it’s picturesque,’ she says. ‘I’d already found a school I liked and we found an area we could afford where we could walk to the beach every day.’
So they sank their money into a four-bedroom wreck (she declines to name the price) with a hot tub full of fungus, exposed pipes and wires, and a basement piled with junk. ‘A renovation was the opposite of what we wanted,’ says Jasmine. ‘We didn’t want to be up to our eyeballs in decisions and spending all our money, but this is the only house we agreed on.’
Yet despite being a property expert, she had never renovated a house. ‘We went into it very naively,’ she says. Tight finances meant they had to live there during the work. ‘That’s not for the faint-hearted. Plus doing the renovation in another country in a different language with a TV crew following us… it was a lot.
‘We probably spent 50 per cent more than we were hoping to. The driveway and patio cost a lot more than we were expecting. It took months, because there was so much topsoil.’ Sometimes the builders got it wrong. ‘When they were digging up the driveway, they went through the soil pipe not just of my house, but of my neighbour’s as well. That was an awkward conversation!’
Now they are almost finished, what advice would she give? ‘Be ready to compromise,’ she says. ‘We wanted a Juliet balcony in our bedroom but we had to scrap it because it was too expensive.
‘Seek help if needed. One of our biggest hurdles was getting the renovation licence. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what to do online so in the end I went to my local council office and they bent over backwards to help me. Lastly, get builders that can work in your timeframe. We had four or five firms give us an estimate but some had a year’s waiting list.’
We see the finished house in the show, and Jasmine reveals that one moment convinced her they’d made the right decision. ‘Our swimming pool had taken months, so when we could use it for the first time, me and the kids just jumped in. That was a big moment, it made us think, “We’re in Spain now and living the dream!”’
Jasmine Harman’s Renovation In The Sun begins on Monday at 5pm on Channel 4.
