We lived in a 3 bed semi until I was 11. Half of it faced due north, so there was a room we never ever used. Then we moved to a 4 bed, which we needed, as there were 6 kids. I absolutely loved the second house. It didn't face any direction fully, so it got sun in most rooms at some stage. It was on a turning circle in a cul de sac, so it looked really small from the front, but had an irregularly shaped extension at the side that was completely soundproof.( My brothers could play their music really loudly and noone ever complained). This opened out into a huge garden, which my mother made absolutely beautiful. My parents built two patios in it together and my mother built her own flower bed, using dry stone walling techniques. My parents had lots of midcentury furniture, some of which was made by my father from a book on Swedish design. You could buy the orange sofa he made now! There was a little gazebo in the garden which turned out to be a monk's cell, the last part of the abbey that had been there. A tree in our garden was pruned by a man who happened to have come there as an apprentice tree surgeon, and he was able to tell us that it had had a bench all the way around the inside. It fell down during Hurricane Charlie, as the front wall was leaning, but my father rebuilt it over the course of 9 years. My mother's style is way ahead of her time; their bedroom has been duckegg blue and brown for about 20 years!

It depends what stage in life you are at...my tiny Covent Garden flat was perfect pre- kids...then moved to suburbs/country...house with 7.5 acres..youngest now aged 19.. don't need a big garden.. dream of a city penthouse and a carefree lifestyle again! Don't wish for a mansion...even a beautifully refurbished place...very isolating.

Climbing plants - including evergreens although not Ivy - can successfully be used on buildings and can look beautiful. My two top tips would be to choose the plant well, make sure it is fairly low growing so you can control it and secondly erect wires using vine eyes, tensioners and wire so that the plant has a definite framework to grow on and you can keep it away from windows and doors. We use the Gripple system shown below.

I love open fires, fireplaces and stoves. I miss my old cottage that had the coal-fired range in the kitchen, open fire in the sitting room and the luxury of an open fire in the bedroom. Ok it had no central heating and the reality would see me living in the kitchen in the winter months and running upstairs with a shovel full of burning coals from the kitchen stove to start the fire in my bedroom before bedtime. The bio fires look quite tempting where it's more something to look at than a heat source. Watching flames is very theraputic, dream house would have fireplace/stove in living rooms, bedroom and bathroom.