The Househunter: Let’s Move To Wales

Now this is a treat; the Carmarthenshire home of the founders of gorgeous lifestyle brand Toast, is now on the market with The Modern House for £650,000 and I could. I really could.

Jamie and Jessica Seaton are the couple behind the hugely successful business, which started out selling pyjamas and blankets, expanded into fashion, and then launched into the home market with a wonderful mix of bedding, throws and accessories. To look at their catalogue is to desire to live in a rustic farmhouse snuggled up in a pair of cashmere socks under a striped woollen bedcover. And yes, their life is like that.

I interviewed Jamie for The Independent back in 2008 and he told me: “We live in a 200-year-old farmhouse that we have sadly neglected over the years since we set up Toast, and have been too busy to do anything about. There’s no question that Toast does reflect our style, but at the moment, it’s more the style that we also aspire to rather than actually have.

“We are about to embark on a restoration programme using limestone plaster and repairing the wattle and daub to bring the house back to what it should be. While we like the earthy style, we also like things to be quite spare. I love to browse around shops and am always picking up unusual things.

And now, 12 years later, wattle and daub presumably complete, the four bedroom house is for sale. It is built from stone built with a slate roof and accommodation spans over 4,200 sq ft across two storeys, with a pottery studio and mature organic vegetable garden.

The house, in its entirety, comprises a series of interconnected former agricultural buildings; the original farmhouse, a milking parlour, cowshed and a hayloft in all spanning 120 ft in length. If you look at the floorplan you will see that the rooms are mostly interconnected as the house is so long and thin.

But there are two sets of staircases so you don’t always have to walk through all of them to get to where you are going. The decor is exactly as it should be for the house – the colours are natural (Toast supports traditional textile techniques and craftsmanship as well as offering a free repair service in its shops) as well as a customer clothes swapping service.

You can tell that this house was put together over time and that it’s owners waited for the right pieces to bring into their home rather than rushing out and buying everything in one go. It’s incredibly hard to do when we all want the instant gratification of the perfect home but it does show the value of taking it slowly and getting to know where you live over a period of time.

The bedrooms are a joy – especially this completely unexpected pink and red one and this one below with its glazed doors leading to that view outside. What do you think? In the absence of realistically being able to transport an 19 and a 16yo and a very urban husband to the rolling Welsh countryside I might just spend the morning shopping the dream rather than actually living it.