After watching Kirstie’s Homemade Home last week, I realised that a lot of the crafts she learns appear to be pretty inaccessible. But they’re not! The show is only meant to inspire you – you’re not meant to go out every single week and take up pottery and glass blowing.  Once you’ve spotted something on the show that you think can really get into, it can make a huge difference to your home. But let’s be honest here, you’re not going to pop down to your local community centre and start a glass blowing class. So here are a few places you should look when you’re ready to take the plunge into the crafty world!

If you’re London-based, the choice of courses is huge. The Make Lounge is a great place to start. They do day courses in everything from cushion making, to vintage soy tea cup candles. Everything is really simple, the tutors are fun and you come away with skills that you can use. You can also try The Studio London, and brand new Papered Parlour are worth a look as well.

For those of you a little further afield, The Liquid Glass Centre in South West England might well be the perfect place for you to start your own glassware collection! London Glassblowing will cover those of you who are capital-bound.

Pottery classes are much easier to cater for. You’ll actually find that most evening class centres have a pottery class. It’s surprisingly cheap to learn so it’s well worth looking at a ten week course instead of a one-off. Make your own crockery set! Take a look at Hot Courses and you’ll find all sorts of crafty classes. Try your local community centre too.

If Kirstie knitting a draught excluder got you inspired to pick up some knitting needles, your local craft shop will have details of knitting classes in your area (in fact, you’ll probably find that they hold some themselves. You’ll find that most of them are pretty informal. If they’re anything like Stitch and Bitch in London you’ll find yourself knitting and pearling with people in a pub! great fun. Check out the Stitch and Bitch website for more details on UK knitting networks. There’s nothing bitchy about them, I promise.

There are loads of different things that you can try yourself. Check out Crafty Crafty for more ideas. Being crafty isn’t meant to be difficult and once you’ve got started with something that you enjoy, you’ll soon find ways to transform your home. It might not be as grand as the one Kirstie is doing up, but it’s yours.

I’m shocked that people are reacting somewhat negatively to Kirstie’s Homemade Home. Yes, she’s very twee. And incredibly Sloaney. But my goodness the women talks sense. She’s got a great sense of style and she knows what she’s doing. So why don’t people like her?

Well, my thoughts are that we’re stuck in an Ikea generation. We like things that come in flatpacks. Stuff we know is sturdy! We play it safe when it comes to our homes. Buying something from an antique shop is risky. But on the other hand… it’s new, and it’s exciting! It’s fun! I’m making a career out of looking for unusual home stuff so I’m smitten with the woman and her new show.

But for some reason, some people aren’t buying Kirstie’s Homemade Home. She’s getting quite negative comments around the interwebs, so I thought I’d find out what you lot think. I wanted to wait a week until the show had settled in, but I really enjoyed last night’s episode, and I wasn’t expecting to be hugely inspired by bathrooms. What did you think? Love her or hate her? Tell us in the poll.

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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.

The big day is almost upon us – after months of preparation, we’re all rubbing our hands with glee in the 4Homes office as we gear up for episode one of Kirstie’s Homemade Home. The show will see Primelocation.com’s own favourite property presenter, Kirstie Allsopp, getting crafty as she restores from scratch a run-down rural retreat in North Devon.

Along the way Kirstie explores the marginalised trades and skills that used to be so prevalent in Britain, from glass blowing and blacksmithing to knitting and willow-working. She also teaches us all about her forte – bagging a bargain! Each week a different room at Meadowgate, Kirstie’s home-from-home, is transformed using the crafts and thrifty tips Kirstie has learned during the programme. It’s an Allsopp-inspired lesson in shabby chic.

As ever at 4Homes, we’ve pulled out all the stops to provide loads of content we hope will be of interest to viewers. We’ve got over 20 step-by-step craft guides you can try at home, covering everything from making curtains to potting plants. On top of that there’s essential info on how to find a craft course near you, and shopping information for all the items you’ll need to transform your house into a homemade home.

If all that Allsopp is a bit overwhelming, Kevin McCloud will be revisiting memorable Grand Designs projects for the next three Wednesdays, and moving into May you can expect an all-new series of George Clarke’s The Home Show.

Kirstie’s Homemade Home starts this Thursday at 8pm on Channel 4.

Rich Payne is Deputy Editor of Channel 4′s property website, 4Homes.

Inspired by a comment from Rich (of the 4Homes blog) on our Kirstie rant, we’ve taken our Allsopp love to a whole new level.

Kirstie for PM. Obviously! How has nobody thought of this before?

Kirstie would make a brilliant Prime Minister. She’s savvy AND sassy (two things surely quite high up on the PM job spec?), and would never embarrass us at important world politics events. Plus, I reckon she could fix the economy. For reals and in heels. Probably while simultaneously pregnant, berating Phil Spencer and restoring a Georgian townhouse.

Any thoughts on how we can make this happen? And would you vote for her?

I am a strong enough person to make the following confession.

I’ve set myself up a Google alert for Kirstie Allsopp. That’s right. I get a daily inbox injection of Allsopp news, gossip and general goodness. It’s all Allsopp, all the time.

This isn’t even something new that I’ll get sick of and unsubscribe from after a week or so. I’ve been getting them for months now. Probably almost a year. Yes, to be fair, it’s part of my job to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world of property – and Kirstie Allsopp is as much a part of the current property world as anguished estate agents and unrealistic asking prices. But if I’m being honest, I’d keep my Kirstie information hotline open even if I didn’t write about this stuff for a living.

Kirstie Allsopp Google alerts are, in fact, how I’ve come to know that Kirstie is about to kick off a new television show called Kirstie’s Homemade Home, due to air early this year on Channel 4. The show will follow Kirstie’s transformation of a dilapidated Devon country cottage into the ‘ultimate homemade home’. She’ll visit auction houses, hunt down homemade crafty things, restore old furniture, and learn how to make soap, candles and pillowcases. No doubt while wearing some very nice shoes.

Because some people seem to have lost faith in this insanely fantastic woman (ever since she, apparently, held us all up at gunpoint and forced us to buy properties against our will while we wept and begged for mercy), I have compiled a short list of reasons why you should in fact LOVE her and watch her new show faithfully.

Ahem.

• She’s a great role model for women in business. “People say to me: ‘How do you know (you earn the same as Phil), because men get paid more than women in lots of different industries?’ I just laugh because everybody who works with me knows I wouldn’t let it happen!”
• She calls it like she sees it. “I assumed I would be seen as a plump, dark Sloane, which is pretty much what I am. It’s fine because I know I’m good at what I do.”
• Even though she named her second child Oscar (along with ‘Jack’, must surely be the most over-bestowed boy’s name in the world right now), her first is called Bay Atlas. So original! And wonderfully geographical!
• She gives sound advice, the kind you should write on a post-it note and permanently attach to your credit card (and when I say ‘you’ I’m obviously talking about myself). “Every time you make a purchase of any kind you think, I am spending this pound: how long will it take me to earn that pound?”
• She’s cool with her (perceived) uncoolness. “I suppose the whole thing is that I was born middle-aged.”
• According to The Telegraph, she once bought a Donna Karan coat but forgot to check the price until she was at the counter. “’How much?’ she screamed. ‘Because it’s cashmere? I don’t care if it’s made of kittens, give me my card back.’”