Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash's £1.2 million Essex mansion, Pickle Cottage, has an array of impressive features including its outdoor pool, jaw-dropping kitchen and iconic pink laundry room.
In a new, exclusive HELLO! interview, the Sort Your Life Out star has opened up about life at her beautiful family home with her five children, Zachary, 17, Leighton, 12, Rex, five, Rose, three and two-year-old Belle.
She has declared that her outdoor kitchen is her next renovation focus and that's been inspired by her kitchen garden, where she grows all her own vegetables. "[It] feels like a full-time job," admits the presenter, as she pours her heart into her home-grown goodies.
© InstagramThe project is something she takes very seriously, and she's even erected a poly tunnel outside to help with her produce. The purpose of a tunnel is to extend the warm seasons and keep the crops protected from harsh winters.
In terms of the outdoor kitchen build, she said: "I've picked up loads of odd bits and pieces off Facebook Marketplace and I'm trying to build a kitchen outside." We can't wait to see how it turns out.
© InstagramConstant renovations
Will she ever stop renovating? No, probably not… "I feel like Pickle Cottage is a constant renovation because it's an old house, so there's always something happening where you have to change something and do something and, you know, it's one of those kind of properties," she revealed.
One of the major renovations last year was the family's duck pond. Taking to Instagram, Stacey posted an incredible time-lapse video documenting the process of building it for the family's four ducks: Daisy, Delilah, Daphne and Delphine.
© InstagramIn the caption, Stacey penned: "We built this pond ourselves & it's been a labour of love. This was the hardest pickle cottage project so far, but was worth EVERY single second! Months of hard work and the happiness on those duck beaks is EVERYTHING!"
She continued, thanking the family for helping out on the project: "Couldn't have done it without my brother-in-law, he helped so much & shared all of his pond expertise & Joe helping me with the endless fence painting."
Taking a step back
Stacey regularly shares photos from her wonderful home, and she has opened up about how she wants to spend more time there with her family as a stay at home mum. Speaking on the Glad We Had This Chat podcast, she said: “I don't want to miss what I potentially feel like I missed with my older children. And I want to be there for my older children, who I think need me now more than ever. I've been battling with that in my head.
"Every year I have a team meeting with my agent and everyone on the team to say ‘What's your plan, what's your goals, blah, blah, blah’. And this year when they asked me my five-year goals, I was like, ‘I want to be a stay-at-home mum’. That is like my dream, my ultimate dream. I just want to be with my kids."
