Erin Napier’s New Book Celebrates ‘The Imperfection Of Our Houses’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Erin Napier revealed the inspiration behind her upcoming third book, “Heirloom Rooms: Soulful Stories of Home.”
“Heirloom Rooms” will hit bookstores on October 3 and contains personal essays and photographs.
“I wanted to write essays about our own home wherein every room is its own chapter about a particular time in our life together and I invited friends to be contributors and do the same,” Napier shared.
“I hope readers will find the stories and photos beautiful for their relatability, and that it makes them reframe the way they think of their own homes,” she added.
One of the book’s themes is that the beauty of each home comes from its imperfections.
“I’ve become bored of the photos of perfectly styled and staged interiors you see so much of in the online world and wanted to create a book celebrating the imperfection of our houses,” she explained. “How perfect and clever can our houses be seems to be the refrain of social media. But what about the life lived in those rooms?”
She concluded, “The styling can be an outward reflection of who we are and what we love—but really, our houses are the backdrops of our lives and celebrations and failures, of growing families.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Napier’s children’s book, “The Lantern House”:
HGTV star Erin Napier is known for her home improvement skills, but now she’s adding “author” to her list of accomplishments.
Napier recently released her first children’s book, “The Lantern House,” a story about how houses can be homes for many different families over the years.
“The reality about our houses is, they go on after we’ve left them, and imagine if houses could talk, what would they tell us about the things that they’ve seen. That’s fascinating to me,” Napier toldPeople “Something I think about a lot is that the house I’m sitting in right now will outlive me. Isn’t that crazy?”
In one part of the story, the Lantern House has no one living inside it, and wonders who its next occupants could be. One dreamed-of person is a trapeze artist, which is a sweet nod to Napier’s oldest daughter, 4 year-old Helen.
“The trapeze artist’s house is Helen’s. If she could do anything, this house would look like a circus tent and she would be the star trapeze artist,” Napier explained.
There was a bit of illustrator Adam Trest within the story, as well.
“The gardener was for Adam and his family,” she shared. “We were taking little bits from our own lives and stories about our houses and the previous owners that we had heard in every decision we made with the book and what it would look like.”
“The house was not based on any house in particular in Laurel, but Adam was on a road trip through Pennsylvania and saw a house that looked just like the Lantern House. And that was really the basis,” the HGTV star continued.
“We wanted it to be something that was like a Four Square [style], an all-American house,” Napier went on. “I’ve never lived in a house that looked like that, neither has he. But we felt like it was a good emblematic architectural style for this particular book. It’s just a friendly house and it was fun to see how you take that friendly, average American house and make it something imaginative and whimsical on the pages.”
“When people tell me that it made them get emotional, then it feels like it did its job. I think we should be emotional about our houses. They’re more than just buildings,” Napier concluded.
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