Light entertainment

In 2010 jeweller Sara Bukhumune, her husband Andy Harris, director of an IT consultancy, and their children Nye and Hope looked round an Edwardian family house in a quiet street on the Shipley Saltaire border. They fell in love with it and made an offer to the estate agent there and then.

“Well actually,” says Sara, “Andy had passed the house loads of times before and said he’d really like to live there, so when it came on the market we decided to have a look at it.”

We are in the kitchen, originally the cellar which was converted by the previous owners. The house takes advantage of the hilly topography of the area by allowing the cellar to open on to a long and productive garden at the back.

“It was the kitchen that really sold me on the house,” says Sara, and it is easy to see why. It’s stylish, a good size, well appointed and leads into an equally spacious dining and family room with views onto the garden.

Sara has brightened up the space with highlights of muted lime paint and her growing collection of birds: on the windowsill an original Vitra Eames House Bird standing next to another smaller but similar wooden bird purchased for a song in BHS, a salad bowl with green bird servers and a Cathy Miles wire sculpture of two birds, bought by Sara for Andy on their “tin” wedding anniversary, catch the eye.

It may be stylish but it’s a fun place, too – a blackboard painted on the wall for messages and ideas, a quirky chair that belonged to Andy’s grandfather, a line of seed trays on the dining table promising late summer vegetable crops for the garden.

“I love the kitchen,” says Sara, “it’s very sociable. When we have parties, everyone ends up in here.”

But it’s not just the kitchen that’s striking in this house. Its elegant high ceilings and large windows invite light into the house throughout the day. However, most impressive of all is the sense of a space in which an enormous amount of creativity is taking place.

Next to the kitchen is Sara’s silversmithing workshop where she fashions delicate flowered rings and necklaces in precious metals. Before becoming a jeweller, Sara worked for a charity for the blind and visually impaired.

She trained in the evenings at Bradford College and did a foundation course at Leeds College to learn her craft and now successfully sells in a number of galleries around Yorkshire, including Kath Libbert Jewellery Gallery where she works part time and online. When we meet she is busy finishing off some buttercup rings for the Saltaire Makers Fair.

The front room has been devoted entirely to music, home to the family’s growing collection of musical instruments, Andy’s stereo system and a vast CD collection. The seriousness of Farrow & Ball’s Breakfast Room Green on the walls is contrasted by a chair at the piano in bright fun orange and a pillar box red Claire Knox Bentham wall hanging made of dripped glue.

“Our neighbour gave us the baby grand piano and we gave him a fireplace we didn’t want,” says Sara, who has recently started playing the saxophone. Andy, a former geophysicist, plays the bass, son Nye (named after Welsh politician and champion of workers’ rights Aneurin “Nye” Bevan) plays tuba and guitar and daughter Hope sings and plays keyboard.

At the top of the house, an airy space with loads of light, Sara has a sewing room, where she makes exquisite purses, clutch bags and spectacle cases from the pieces of luxurious fabric: brocades, satins and tweeds she has collected.

And should the family wish to take a few moments away from being creative and inventive, they can kick back and watch TV, read The Beano and play board games in the sitting room. On the ground floor, off the central hallway that houses a four-storey staircase, this room is filled with comfy sofas, chairs and cushions and toasty warm from a wood burning stove. An enormous window overlooks the garden, slightly chaotic with its tufts of wildflowers (inspiration for Sara’s jewellery?), busy vegetable beds, stacks of logs for the stove and Andy’s double garage. “He had to have a big garage,” says Sara, “because he’s converting a Morris Minor to run on electricity in there.”

The house has had only five owners since it was built in 1906 and retains many original details, such as coloured glass sections in most windows and tiled fireplaces.

The black-glass tiled bathroom with its cast iron bath might have been installed later, Sara thinks possibly in the 1930s. “It’s not the best bath, it always seems to turn the water cold,” she says

A contemporary shower room on the top floor caters for those in the family with more modern sensibilities – perhaps it’s no coincidence that daughter Hope has chosen to have her bedroom up here – tucked between a book-filled chill-out area and Sara’s sewing room.

“It’s great living here,” says Sara, “there’s space enough for us all to do what we want and there’s loads of light too.” It’s a happy home.

Sara sells in Kath Libbert Jewellery Gallery and Art Parade in Saltaire and through websites Etsy and Coriandr. www.sarabuk.co.uk www.kathlibbertjewellery. co.uk