Southern Living: Erin And Ben Napier Share Their Dream Home In The Mississippi Countryside
Erin and Ben share the story of finding and creating their dream home in this November’s issue of Southern Living Magazine.
Growing up in Laurel, Mississippi, Erin Napier had driven past her dream house countless times, but she’d never actually seen it. The stately, old brick Tudor isn’t visible from the road, so Erin had never realized what was hiding behind the rolling green fields and tall pine trees on a two-lane highway outside town. When her husband, Ben, sent her the listing in the spring of 2021, she couldn’t believe she had missed it all those years. “I was in love immediately—and that scared me to death,” she says. “I thought, ‘We don’t need another house...but maybe we do.’ ”
At the time, Erin was 9 months pregnant with her second daughter (Mae, who’s now a year old). Her oldest, Helen, was 3. Their little home in downtown Laurel had started to feel small, especially when they had family and friends visiting. Ben and Erin had always talked about getting a weekend place in the country where the kids could run around, play in the dirt, plant a garden, and maybe even fish on occasion (Helen is a fan). “I grew up on a 40-acre chicken farm and would pick out a baby chick to be my pet every time a new load would come,” says Erin. “My playtime consisted of climbing a lot of trees and digging for arrowheads in the woods. That’s not something our girls can do in town. I want their bathwater to be dirty at the end of the day, so it means they weren’t just playing on screens.”
The Napiers have led dozens of renovations for their popular HGTV shows, Home Town and Home Town Takeover, so it only made sense that this house would be a bit of a project. It needed a more functional kitchen, a new laundry room, and some work on the outdoor spaces, but the fundamentals were all there. Completed in 1930 with huge heart-pine beams, wide plank floors, tongue-and-groove paneling, and custom millwork, the home is as sturdy as it is charming. “It’s unbelievably well built,” says Ben. “Supposedly, all the wood in the whole house—the floors, the trim, the beams—was cut and milled on the property. And that’s pretty cool for me as a woodworker.”