Slowing down and making do – how I'm embracing a home that evolves slowly and imperfectly

Screen printer Hannah Carvell is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on colourful home design for a creative family to live in. See the rest of her articles here.

I often find myself torn between scrolling through Instagram and flipping through the glossy pages of interiors magazines, longing to transform my home. The reality, however, is that there is no spare budget for renovation, making this a stark contrast to my past life.

Our two previous homes were full-scale renovation projects: new roofs, scaffolding, walls knocked down, new kitchens and bathrooms. I was constantly ordering tile samples and heading to the builders merchants to match bricks and worrying about planning applications.

Over the past decade, not only did they consume our finances, but we also lived in a constant haze of dust and disruption. At one point, we joked that our toddler saw more of the builder than his dad, who was commuting to London at the time.

Despite this, I’ve never been one to shy away from a project. If a house is old, slightly crumbling, and full of character, I’m drawn to it instantly. So when we moved to Somerset, we knew that although we wouldn’t be able to renovate, we would still find something with charm. What we found was an old stone cottage or, more officially, a Somerset Long House.

We first viewed it on a hazy summer day in June. We had driven three hours from Bedford, feeling overwhelmed by the circumstances that had forced our move. But something about the house felt magical. Bathed in sunshine, with stone outbuildings and wildflowers peeking through the cracks, I fell in love immediately.

That said, we didn’t make an offer until nearly a year later. We looked at many more houses in the coming months, and back home as we packed up the life we knew, the house didn’t leave my mind. Things felt especially awful when we finally put our town house on the market.

I had been living through a full blown reno, thinking it would be worth all rubble and setbacks to become our “forever home”, so it was pretty tough knowing it had to go on the market even before my new kitchen had even been delivered.

Seeing the oven I had picked out and the marble worktops get installed made me feel numb, but in these moments I found myself day dreaming about living in the Somerset house. It became my desert island comfort place to go to in my mind.

At first we had dismissed it as being too different to our spacious Victorian town house, with its low ceilings and small galley kitchen. How would we fit our furniture in, where would all our clutter go? But something about the house just drew me back, so months after the initial visit we went again, this time with our children, and we all agreed it was the one.

If we had to leave life as we knew it behind this was the fresh start we wanted and we would make it work.

In preparation for the move, I sold much of our furniture. My beloved large green dresser had to go, as it was simply too tall for the cottage ceilings. We decluttered endlessly, letting go of anything that wouldn’t fit our new life.

We moved on a rainy day in February, a stark contrast to those sun drenched viewings. The removal men arrived before us and immediately pointed out leaks before we had even stepped inside. And yet, it still felt magical.

That first evening, we lit the fire and sat among the boxes, feeling as though we had left behind some of the stress of job loss, school changes, and upheaval. It was the beginning of something gentler. No marble work tops or Quooker hot water taps but an old AGA and sense of calm that money can’t buy.

Now, two years into our new life in Somerset, I can admit that in the first year we did almost nothing to the house. Instead, we lived. The children settled into new schools, and we explored our surroundings.

With four acres of land, there is always something to do, tending the garden, keeping chickens, growing vegetables. We did have to splurge and bought a second-hand ride-on mower – our town house plug in mower quite literally would not cut it!

We were befriended by a local farmer who occasionally brings his cows to graze in our field, seeing the calves come and put their heads over the fence in spring is beautiful.

Of course, the cottage quickly revealed its flaws. Peeling wallpaper, flaking paint, and the occasional leak remind us that it needs attention. But without the budget for major work, we have learned to make do and to move slowly, even more so embrace the changes.

Living with an AGA is a learning curve when your oil runs out in winter and suddenly you have no heating, or when a large tree blows down in a storm and blocks the road (you need to head out with a chain saw to get it moved asap), and as for the septic tank...I will say no more.

I have replaced my old dresser with a smaller stripped pine one found in the next village. I painted the tired IKEA kitchen units in a cheerful eggshell shade and updated the handles for a simple budget refresh. I sanded back the dining room floor and painted the walls and window frames green. Each change is small, considered, and done over time.

There is still a list of things I’d like to do, painting the living room, fixing the leaks, but there's no rush.

More often than not, our priorities lie outside: chopping and stacking logs for winter or, more recently, planting an orchard at the end of the garden. It will take years to mature, but putting down roots feels liberating and that we are investing into our future here.

Old habits die hard and I sometimes still dream about making changes. Last week a new drop of wallpaper from Vivienne Westwood and Cole and Son had me in a daydream of how I would like to use it in my bedroom, what colour paint I would pair with it, maybe I would paint the old beams in a pillar box contrasting red, the light fittings and rugs that would look fabulous. But that is not based in my reality (£310 per roll!!!) and, actually, that is ok.

We have painted a few rooms ourselves and we decorate by bringing in huge bunches of daffodils and bluebells from the garden in spring and filling vases around the house with freshly picked dahlias in summer.

The wanting of new tiles and wallpaper is fleeting while the sense of peace I feel living my country dream life has not worn off yet – we still marvel coming out at night time and seeing the stars so clearly in the sky.

I love waking up and pulling the curtains to green fields and sometimes sheep. The starlings are currently in murmuration mode and we see and hear swarms of them fly over our house. It's pure magic.

When everything outside is so beautiful and life is full in other ways I am thankful for how lucky I already am, peeling wallpaper included. I’m learning to be grateful for what we already have and to embrace a home that evolves slowly and imperfectly.