I won’t lie, I was dizzy at the mere mention of the new Kirstie Allsopp show on Channel 4, Kirstie’s Homemade Home. And she didn’t disappoint! She’s one savvy girl. Selling houses right now isn’t going to make her a fortune, so she’s turned her property skills on their head and decided to invest in making a house a home. It’s clever.

The house she’s doing up – Meadowgate – is stunning. In fact, it’s my dream house. Each week she’s going to take a room and show you how to make it look beautiful. She’s pulled out some great tricks too. There’s something so fabulous about watching someone make pottery. Maybe it’s the Patrick Swayze thing? The glass blowing seemed a little out of most people’s leagues, but everything else she did was pretty much accessible to everyone watching. If the reaction on Twitter is anything to go by, people lapped it up like interior design loving puppies.

One of the highlights was her talking to Cath Kidston, and she explained why her chintzy designs worked so well. She might have a lot of busy prints going on, but they all work with the same colours. That’s pretty clever. It means that as long as you keep stuff the same colour, you can mix and match with prints and textures. That’s much more fun than having everything the same pattern, don’t you think? Keeping a theme in your rooms holds everything together, and as long as your main idea stays the same, everything will work.

The house was out of most people’s budget, but everything Ms. Allsopp featured could have been transferred to another house. I have an interiors website and I can’t wait to get started with simple things like picking up old furniture and doing it up. It just doesn’t look that difficult anymore. Some people might not like Kirstie’s posh Sloaney ways, but I find her quite charming (although she looked shattered for some reason). There’s something about the way she presents that makes everything she does look easy. And she’s tough too. The way she haggles and lugs great big bits of furniture about is fun. She comes across as very girlie but she’s strong too and I like that. She also mentioned the art of not buying every single pretty thing you see otherwise your house will look like a junk shop. I could learn a thing or two from that. (What’s wrong with your house looking like a junk shop?!?)

Channel 4 got this show just right. It’s just the right amount of showiness and fancy stuff to make it interesting, but it’s also got an appealing side to it as well. I imagine a lot of people are going to be making cushion covers after this. Next week she’s doing up the bathroom, and while that’s generally the dullest room in the house for me, I’ll tune in. Kirstie was the perfect choice and frankly I could agree more with Jess’ call to make her Prime Minister. She’s not all frills and pretty things y’know.

Kirstie Allsopp, Kirstie's Homemade Home

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Property TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.