00:00Hello, I'm Helen Skelton. Welcome to my home.
00:13A few months ago, this room looked very, very different.
00:16The ceiling was low, there was a big wall there, but it was the first job.
00:19Probably one of the only jobs that I did on the house.
00:22My husband and I took the ceiling out. It nearly killed me.
00:26Anyway, I survived the tell-the-tale, and now we have this big open ceiling.
00:29Which is brilliant, because the kids do play basketball in here and football in here when there's not a Christmas
00:34tree.
00:35You can have all the gadgets in the world that you want, but I think if you're a mum, every
00:40mum needs a cupboard of chaos.
00:42This looks lovely.
00:44But behind it is absolute carnage, so we just let the kids put their toys in there, and then shut
00:50the door like there's nothing going on.
00:57My cooker is a great source of amusement, because I am not very domesticated, I do not like cooking, so
01:03why did I invest so heavily in such a beautiful stove?
01:08Because I liked the story.
01:10The people that make these stores were telling me about the fact that Earl Shackleton took a similar one to
01:15the South Pole, and as soon as they told me that, I was sold.
01:22I think the only person who doesn't take the mick out of me for buying a tin bath is the
01:27dog.
01:27You love it, don't you, Pop?
01:29Oh, you could have played ball, but yeah, I got a tin bath, I got a concrete sink, both probably
01:36impractical, but I love the people who made them, I love the textures, and I just really liked them, and
01:42I thought, sod it, it's my house, I'll have what we want.
01:51My kids live for climbing trees, they are, in the best possible way, fabulously feral, so I designed this bedroom
01:59where they've got bunk beds, drawers underneath, a den behind the back of the bed, little superhero reading corner, reading
02:06corner, but this is probably my favourite bit of the house, and definitely their favourite bit of the house, they've
02:12got their own little climbing wall.
02:18At Hearth, I really want to be a farmer, but I'm not a millionaire, so I can't buy a farm
02:24and a working telly, so this was the next best thing.
02:26We're really lucky that we've managed to create a home that the kids love and we're all happy in, but
02:31we bought this house because of the garden, we're so lucky that the garden is huge, it's got all these
02:37little different corners and pockets, and that's because the family who lived here before spent so much energy out here,
02:44and
02:44that's what made us love the house, it was a small house, massive garden, but this just said to me,
02:50family home and loads of love.
02:51We've got the swing, this is all our veg parts, my husband has built a fire pit in lockdown for
02:58his mates, because obviously they are a really important part of our garden.
03:02We've got the kids' shade, which me and my three-year-old painted in the summer, it's been a barbecue
03:06shade, a painting place when it's raining, a Halloween den, my friend dressed up as a mummy in there, it's
03:12going to be a Santa's grotto, all of these little corners of the garden are kind of becoming the places
03:17that we're making memories and having little special events,
03:20so I'm really, really lucky to have this garden, we love it, I don't take it for granted, but gardens
03:25like this do not take care of themselves, so I better go and do some digging in this skirt, well,
03:31why not?
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