Erin and Ben Napier have their hands full of TV shows, businesses and special projects — but the couple still always manage to put family time first.
The stars of HGTV's Home Town recently completed a new home in the country, where they can spend quality time with their two daughters, Helen, 4, and Mae, 17 months, and take a break from the spotlight they've found themselves in thanks to the success of their show, its spinoffs, and now, acting roles in one of the network's first scripted holiday movies, A Christmas Open House (now streaming on discovery+ and airing on HGTV Dec. 7).
"This is our quote, unquote weekend getaway," Ben, 39, tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story (on newsstands Friday) of the 4,000 sq. ft. 1930 Tudor-style home they bought in July 2021 and renovated top to bottom over nine months.
After Mae was born, the pair had begun to feel the squeeze at their house in downtown Laurel.
"Once you add a swing set, a dog, a kiddie pool and a rabbit cage, suddenly the yard that felt huge in the beginning starts feeling a lot smaller," explains Ben. And since Home Town has made Laurel a popular destination for out-of-town visitors, the family has less privacy. "We couldn't really use our front yard. We were limited to the backyard," he adds.
The couple wanted an old house in a rural setting—a rarity in southern Mississippi, says Erin. They even considered building something from the ground up. But with Erin's very specific wish list—a brick exterior, a screened-in sunrise or sunset porch, stairs into the kitchen and wide-plank oak floors, to name a few—and Ben's love for high-quality materials, it was going to be a budget buster.
When the perfect house suddenly appeared on the market just outside town, they couldn't believe it. "It really felt like a God thing that we found this house," says Erin. "It has every single thing that was on that list. It gives me goose bumps."
The couple undertook what Ben calls "delicate demo," saving as much as they tossed out. They converted one of the six bedrooms into a laundry room and another into a playroom for the girls, and ripped out an ultra-'80s bath complete with a corner jacuzzi tub and green countertops.
Then they carefully layered back in the country charm with wallpaper, V-groove paneling, patterned fabrics on the furniture and a utilitarian-chic kitchen Erin says was inspired by the downstairs one on Downton Abbey.
"When I'm here, I feel like I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean. I'm in England, world's away from Mississippi," she says.
Luckily, they're really only a short drive from downtown Laurel, their businesses — Laurel Mercantile, Scotsman General and the new Scent Library — and Helen's school, meaning they can disappear to the country as often as they like and let their daughters get a taste of the great outdoors.
Helen "has always known she wanted to be a country girl," says Ben. And the family's new property is "somewhere the girls can run wild and get filthy."
She's also "loving never wearing shoes. She just takes them off and runs through fields and into the woods," says Erin. "There's a lot of tree climbing and dirt digging and fishing; those are things that were just a normal part of our lives growing up."
The two youngest Napiers have already grown attached to this special place: Helen has told her parents it will be hers someday. "We think of this house as an heirloom," says Erin.
Amid their ever-busier lives, Ben and Erin, who will mark their 14th wedding anniversary on Nov. 22, know how crucial it is to carve out moments together away from work when they can focus solely on their girls.
"We know this is fleeting," says Erin of having two little ones. "I feel like we are in the middle of living the best years of our life. I'm very aware of it, and I want to keep it somehow."
The Napier's holiday special, Home Town: Christmas in Laurel, airs Nov. 27; A Christmas Open House is now streaming on discovery+ and will air on HGTV Dec. 7; Home Town returns to HGTV Dec. 4; and season two of Home Town Takeover will arrive in early 2023.
