Hayley and Andrea featuring on Channel 4’s Chateau DIY

If you watched us on Channel 4’s Chateau DIY: Win the Dream, here’s the real story behind the experience.

A wardrobe that turned into a disaster, cameras everywhere, and one request we heard more than once: “Ladies… can you say that again without swearing?” Here’s what being on reality TV was really like.

“Ladies, can you say that again… but without swearing this time, please?”

That sentence probably sums up our experience of filming better than anything else.

When you’re trying to renovate furniture, solve problems on the spot and compete in a reality TV challenge, all while cameras are following your every move, it turns out a few colourful words can slip out without you even realising.

Earlier this year I had the chance to appear on Chateau DIY: Win the Dream on Channel 4, filmed in the beautiful Normandy region of France. The show brings together several couples who compete through a series of DIY and renovation challenges, all with the chance of winning the dream, a French château.

Andrea and I thought it sounded like the perfect adventure.

What we didn’t fully realise at the start, though, was just how intense, unpredictable and genuinely funny the whole reality TV experience would be.

Why We Said Yes to the Château

Andrea and I are no strangers to getting stuck in.

I’m currently renovating my Victorian terrace at home (because apparently I don’t know how to sit still), and Andrea works as part of the renovation team for LATCH in Leeds, helping transform properties into homes.

DIY and renovation are things we both genuinely love.
We’re the kind of people who see an empty space or a tired building and immediately start imagining what it could become.

So when the opportunity came up to compete for a château in France, it felt like something we simply had to say yes to.

It was bold, slightly chaotic, and completely outside our comfort zone, which usually means it’s exactly the kind of thing worth doing.

The Reality of Reality TV

Let me tell you something.

Reality TV is not “turn up, do a bit of DIY, sip wine in the sunshine.”

It’s long days.
It’s cameras everywhere.
It’s filming moments more than once so everything works from a production point of view.

You might see a five-minute segment on television, but what you don’t see is the amount of work and time that goes into creating those moments.

There’s a huge team behind the scenes making everything run smoothly, and honestly, they were fantastic. Professional, supportive, and incredibly good at what they do.

It definitely gave me a whole new respect for how much work goes into making television feel effortless.

Competition, Strategy… and Human Nature

One of the most interesting parts of the experience was watching how different people approached the competition.

At the end of the day, we were all there for the same reason: there was a château at stake.

Some couples were incredibly strategic in the way they approached things, always thinking a few steps ahead. Andrea and I went into it wanting to do the best job we could while also enjoying the experience for what it was.

And honestly, we really did.

The Best Part: The People

What surprised me the most was the friendships that came out of it.

When you spend long days together solving problems, lifting things, painting things, fixing things and occasionally wondering what on earth you’ve signed up for, you bond pretty quickly.

The other contestants were brilliant, and the production team were genuinely lovely to work with.

Those connections have carried on beyond the show too. Andrea and I even ended up appearing on the Chateau DIY: Win the Dream podcast to talk more about our experience and share some of the behind-the-scenes stories that viewers don’t always get to see.

The Moments That Didn’t Make It to TV

One moment that still makes me laugh didn’t make it into the final edit.

At one point we’d bought a wardrobe, but all we had beforehand was a slightly grainy photograph of it. There were no instructions, no diagrams (just the picture) so we assumed we knew what we were picking up.

When we arrived, the wardrobe was completely in pieces.

Not neatly dismantled either… just a collection of wooden parts laid out in front of us. Andrea and I were looking at them thinking, what on earth are all these pieces?

It genuinely felt like someone had tipped out a giant jigsaw puzzle, except this one came with no picture on the box and absolutely no instructions.

Eventually we managed to work out how it all went together, but by that point we’d already decided we were going to transform it into something else. The plan was to chop it down and turn it into more of a bookcase shape, a quick and simple furniture transformation.

Or so we thought.

What we hadn’t realised was that the sides were curved and the structure was hollow, which meant the moment we started trying to cut it down, it became an almost impossible job.

What we thought would be a quick “cut it down and make it look like a bookcase” project suddenly turned into a full-on puzzle of its own.

And in the end, that “simple” idea was actually what led to our downfall in that particular challenge.

What the Château Experience Taught Me

Standing in the middle of a renovation project in France, covered in paint and trying to make something beautiful out of something unfinished, I realised something.

The Flavour Fleet has grown in much the same way - organically.

It started with a small Prosecco van. Then we took over a beautiful little horsebox catering unit, and that was really the spark that set everything in motion. From there, I started converting vans myself, tailoring each one to exactly how we wanted it to work.

We’ve built them from the ground up. We know every centimetre of every unit we’ve created.

And we’re always changing things, always tweaking, always trying to make the next one better than the last.

What the château experience really made me realise is that I probably don’t do things in a particularly linear way. I’m always looking for the next opportunity, the next idea, the next challenge.

But that’s where the creativity comes from.

It’s made me realise that I’m happiest when I’m building something new, solving problems, and figuring things out as I go. Standing still has never really been my style.

So if anything, the whole experience just confirmed one thing for me:

I’m always looking for the next adventure.

Building Things Properly

Looking back now, the whole experience had everything - creativity, chaos, a few questionable DIY decisions and plenty of laughter along the way.

And in many ways, it felt surprisingly familiar.

Because whether I’m renovating a house, trying to turn a wardrobe into a bookcase in rural France, or building a new food unit for The Flavour Fleet, the approach is always the same: get stuck in, work it out as you go, and somehow bring the idea to life.

It might not always go perfectly… but then again, the best adventures never do.

You can see more behind-the-scenes moments from our time in France over on our Instagram.

By Hayley – Founder of The Flavour Fleet

“Ladies, Can You Say That Again… Without Swearing?” My Time on Chateau DIY: Win the Dream